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NOTES OF A TRAVELLER, 

ON THE 

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL STATE 

OF 

FRANCE, PRUSSIA, SWITZERLAND, ITALY, 

AND 

OTHER PARTS OF EUROPE, 
IDuring tl)c ^ircscnt dLcnlnx^. 

BY 

SAMUEL LAING, ESQ., 

AUTHOR OF "a JOURNAL OF A RESIDENCE IN NORWAY," AND OF "A TOUR IN SWEDEN." 
FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

CAREY AND HART 

1846. 



^9'i';' 
^«^ 



PHILADELPHIA: 
K. & P. G. COLLINS, 
PRINTERS. 



JM 



CONTENTS. ^^ 



CHAPTER I. 
Travel-writing. — Holland. — The sublime in Scenery. — The Picturesque in Hol- 
land. — Garden Houses. — Decay of Holland. — Causes of Decay. — Commercial 
Decline. — Manufacturing Stability. — Useful Arts. — Fine Arts. — Useful and Fine 
Arts compared. — Useful and Fine Arts. — The Poor in Holland. — The poor in 
Manufacturing Towns. — Poor Colonies. — Kingly Power in Holland. — Belgium. 
Federalism. — Union of the two Countries. — The Federal Principle. — Its work- 
ing in Switzerland, .....---35 

CHAPTER II. 
France. — Face of the Country. — Of England. — Old Subdivision of Land in Eng- 
land. — Great Social Experiment in France. — Abolition of Primogeniture. — 
Opinions of Arthur Young — Mr. Birbeck — Edinburgh Reviewers — Dr. Chal- 
mers, reviewed. — Effects of the Division of Land in France examined. — 
French Character — Morals — Honesty — Decimal Division of Weights and Mea- 
sures, why not popular, - - - - - - - -61 

CHAPTER. III. 

Social Economy — Why not treated as a distinct Science. — Aristocracy replaced 

by Functionarism in France — In Germany Interference of Government witli 

Free Agency. — Amount of Functionarism in a French Department — ludre et 
Loire — Amount in a Scotch County — Shire of Ayr. — Effects of Functionaristn 
on Industry — On National Character — On Morals — OnCiviland Political Liberty. 
— Change in the State of Property in Prussia. — Two Antagonist Principles in the 
Social Economy of Prussia, - - - - - - -'84 

CHAPTER IV. 
Prussia. — Not constituting one Nation. — Prussian Policy in this Century. — Attempt 
to form National Character. — Why not successful.:^— Military organization of 
Prussia. — Liability to Military Service of all Prussians. — Service in the Line. — 
In the Army of Reserve. — First Division. — Second. — Effects of the System on 
the Political Balance of Europe. — Its Advantages. — Its Disadvantages compared 
to a Standing Army. — Its great Pressure on Time and Industry. — Its inferiority 
as a Military Force. — Amount of Military Force of Prussia. — Defect in the 
Continental Armies. — Non-commissioned Officers. — Men. — Too delicately bred 
in the Prussian Army. — Longevity of Officers. — The probable Issue of a War 
between Prussia and France. — Policy of England if such a war arise, - lOS 

CHAPTER V. 
The German Customs' Union or Commercial League. — Its Origin — Objects — Politi- 
cal Bearings — And probable Eflects, ----.. 133 

CHAPTER VI. 
Notes on the Prussian Educational System. — Its Effects on the Moral Condition 
of the People, -.--..--- 170 

CHAPTER VII. 

Notes on the Educational System of Prussia continued. — On its Effects on the 
Religious Condition of the People. — On the Prussian Church, - - - 180 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Notes on the Prussian Educational System continued. — Its Eflects on the Social 
and Moral Condition and Character of the People, .... 212 

CHAPTER IX. 

Disjointed State of Prussia as one National Body. — Different Laws and Administra- 
tions. — Functionarism. — Aristocracy and Functionarism compared, - - 228 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER X. 

Berlin. — Management of the Poor in Berlin. — Details concerning the Manage- 
ment of the Poor, - - - - - - , - 



CHAPTER XI. 

Leipsic. — Book-trade — Its Effects on the Literature — On the Character — On the 
Social Economy of the Germans. — The German Theatre — its Influence. — The 
Educational Influences in Society. — The Scotch and the Germans compared, 253 

CHAPTER XII. 
Notes on the Corn Law Question — Abroad and at Home, . _ . 266 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Notes on the Rhine. — Switzerland. — Swiss Character. — Church of Geneva. — 
Swiss Scenery, -----.-.. 229 

CHAPTER XIY. 
Notes on Switzerland. — Montreus. — Checks on Over-Population. — Swiss Dairy. — 
Agriculture. — Social Condition, ------- 315 

CHAPTER XY. 
Lyons. — On its Manufacturing System. — Notes on Avignon. — French Barracks. — 
Cookery — Its Effects on National Wealth, - . . - . 334 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Notes on Genoa. — Poor of Genoa — Causes of the Decline of Genoa, - - 344 

CHAPTER SXll. 

Notes on Naples — Scenery. — Vesuvius. — Pompeii. — Neapolitan People — Causes 
of their low Condition, - - - - - - - -351 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Travelling in Italy. — ^Vetturini. — Capua. — Terracina. — Pontine Marshes. — Ma- 
remma. — The Approach to Rome. — Coliseum, - - . . 364 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Notes on St. Peter's. — On Rome. — Population. — Position. — Causes of the Rise of 
Rome. — Origin of Rights of Property. — Civilization of Ancient Rome, - 377 

CHAPTER XX. 

The Pope's Benediction. — Vatican Library. — Tomb of Clement XIII. — Horses of 
Monte Cavallo. — Ancient and Modern Sculpture, - - . - 3S8 

CHAPTER XXI. 
Church of Rome. — Catholicism and Protestantism, ... - 394 

CHAPTER XXII. 
The Olive Tree — Its Effects in Social Economy. — Maize. — Potatoes. — Florence. 
— Division of Land in Tuscany. — State of the People. — State of the Continental 
and English People compared, ------- 415 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
Florence to Bologna. — Notes on Venice, _ - . . . 422 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
The Brenta. — Italian Towns. — Way of Living of the Lower Classes. — Difference 
between tlie Italian and English Populations. — Causes of the Difference. — 
Reproductive and Unreproductive Expenditure, - - - - 431 

CHAPTER XXV. 
Milan. — Como. — Austrian Government. — Notes on Lago Maggiore. — Isola Bella. 
— The Alps. — On the Social State of France, Prussia, Itafy. - - - 443 



P E E F A C E 



SECOND EDITION 



The present generation stands in a very remarkable historical 
epoch — at the close of an old state of things in the political and 
social economy of Europe, and at the rise and formation of a new. 
Old laws and institutions, the old distribution of property, privi- 
lege, and power, no longer rest upon the old basis in any part of 
Europe, are no longer supported by the universal conformity and 
implicit faith and acceptance of society. Where they still survive 
the storm of the French Revolution, they hold but a lingering 
existence, for the roots in the human mind which supported them 
are shaken. An aristocracy founded upon property, birth, educa- 
tion, respect of the people, and honour, exists in all its ancient 
integrity in England only. On the continent, even where the 
principle of aristocracy is not abolished by an alteration in the 
feudal law of succession, it is abolished by the precedence given 
to government employment, civil and military, over all other dis- 
tinctions, and by the general diffusion among people in no way 
belonging to the class of nobility, of personal wealth, social influ- 
ence, high education, refinement of manners, and all that formerly 
separated aristocracy from the other elements of the social body. 
None can claim pre-eminence from possessing what is common to 
all above the lowest ranks of the community. This natural and 
unavoidable advance of society it is foolish to lament over, and 
impossible to retard. It is a result which is working itself out in 
Europe, even under the governments the most anxious to retain 
a highly privileged nobility around the throne as its surest support. 
In Austria, in Russia, in Denmark, in Sweden, in all the countries 
2 



10 PREFACE. 

beyond the direct shock of the French revolutionary spirit, we 
see, without revolution, an avowed change in the governments, 
or principles of their social economy, a change and revolution in 
the state and spirit of society, a diminution of the social influence 
of the aristocratic element in it, as great as in France itself, or in 
Prussia. This transition-state of society over all the continent is 
not yet ripe for the historian ; but the traveler may give some 
knowledge of its various phases in different countries ; and the 
public mind, seldom wrong in its instinct for providing for its in- 
tellectual, any more than for its physical wants, instinctively feels 
that the events of the French Revolution, and all the results that 
issued from it, are now but in the act of completing themselves 
by their effects on society ; that chronicle, not history, is all that 
man, not gifted with prescience, can as yet venture to write con- 
cerning that great moral convulsion ; and it grasps at travels, 
tours, statistical reports, and observations on the social state of 
foreign lauds, leaving the historian to sing his song to future gene- 
rations, about events of which the consequences are still in the 
womb of time. To this craving of the public mind for information 
regarding the present social and political state of the people of the 
continent, not to any merit of his own, the author ascribes the 
rapid sale of the first editions of this work and of his two preceding 
publications, " A Journal of a Residence in Norway" and a <'Tour 
in Sweden." They are the first and second parts of the same 
attempt to give the English public just views of the political and 
social economy of the other European people. In justice to the 
public, which has placed confidence in his statements and conclu- 
sions concerning the social, moral, and political condition of the 
countries of which he has written, the author considers himself 
bound to vindicate his good faith, justice, and accuracy in each of 
the three volumes in which he has prosecuted his general plan, 
however high the quarters from which they have been attacked. 
He republishes, therefore, in this preface, his reply to a pamphlet 
of the representative of the King of Sweden at tlie British court, 
in which the fidelity of his statements and the justice of his con- 
clusions are impugned. Kings and ambassadors are but ordinary 
men, and sometimes less than ordinary men, on the arena of litera- 
ture. The reading public of this country cannot be hoodwinked 
by authority or official pretension ; and the humblest writer has but 
to state his data, and conclusions fairly and fully, to demolish all 



PREFACE. 11 

attempts to impose upon or mislead its judgment. The author 
seizes this opportunity of doing so, because this Reply to his Ex- 
cellency Count Biornstierna's pamphlet develops his statements 
and conclusions on the subjects discussed in his volumes on Swe- 
den and Norway with considerable detail; and because it appeared 
only in a periodical publication (the Monthly Chronicle) of very 
small circulation, and now out of print. 

In 1836 Mr. Laing published " A Journal of a Residence in 
Norway," and, in 1838, "A Tour in Sweden." These works 
were much read. The views they gave of the physical and moral 
state, and comparative v/ell-being, of two nations living in the 
Scandinavian peninsula, under totally distinct social systems, were 
considered very curious and interesting. They directed the atten- 
tion of political philosophers to singular results developed in Nor- 
way upon the multiplication, well-being, and morality of its isolated 
population, by the great diffusion of property and of legislative 
power, and by the perfect political equality of all classes in the 
social body ; and to equally singular results in Sweden, arising 
frpm a social structure altogether the reverse of the Norwegian. 
Trifling as these works were as literary productions, they awak- 
ened the public mind in Europe to the unprincipled attempts of 
the Swedish cabinet to subvert the liberal constitution of Norway, 
although virtually guaranteed to the Norwegian nation by England 
and the other allied powers, and formally accepted and sworn to 
by the Swedish monarch himself; and they had the effect of 
raising around the Norwegian constitution the impregnable bar- 
rier of the European public opinion, which the Swedish monarch 
and his cabinet are forced to respect. When the last of these two 
works appeared, a semi-official notice was given in the govern- 
ment newspaper of Stockholm, that a refutation of the statements 
and reasonings contained in them would be published— that is, 
observed the other newspapers, provided they can be refuted. 
Two years, and much diplomatic wisdom, have been expended 
in doing into English those Swedish ideas on government and 
national morality which constitute this official long-promised refu- 
tation. It has at last dropped unnoticed into the world, in the 
shape of a two-shilling pamphlet of sixty-five pages, " On the 
Moral State and Political Union of Sweden and Norway, in 
answer to Mr. S. Laing's Statements." Two shillings are not 
much money, yet a pamphlet may be very dear at two shillings. 



12 PREFACE, 

But this is a work of the state, an official defence of a nation and 
its government, of a king, cabinet, and diet, in sixty-five pages, 
price two shillings. Let us pay that respect to the outward official 
position of this two shillings' worth of printed paper, which we 
would deny to its intrinsic merit and value — this is the principle 
on which the monarchy itself is based in Sweden. 

The statements of Mr. Laing which chiefly interest the public, 
and which, from the importance of the deductions made from 
them, the public may reasonably expect to see specially refuted 
in this pamphlet, are these : — First, his statement that the Nor- 
wegian constitution works admirably well — that the people of 
Norway, with their legislation entirely in their own hands, with- 
out a nobility or privileged class in their legislature, and with the 
power of the king limited constitutionally to a mere suspensive 
veto in the enactment of laws, and without any exclusive right 
to the sole initiative, are prosperous and thriving in a remarkable 
degree — that they have, by the economical measures of their 
legislature, paid off their national debt, have reduced their taxes, 
have, notwithstanding, provided for military, naval, and civil 
establishments suitable to their just position in the political world ; 
are removing gradually and judiciously, not precipitately, restric- 
tions on the freedom of industry and trade inherited from their 
Danish masters; are allowing no superfluous functionaries, mili- 
tary, naval, or civil, Swedish or Norwegian, to batten upon the 
means of the industrious classes, and are evincing the most un- 
questionable and enlightened loyalty to the monarch to whom 
they have sworn allegiance, although steadily, firmly, but re- 
spectfully, exposing and defeating his want of loyalty to the 
constitution he had sworn to accept and maintain. Now is this 
statement true or false ? 

This Swedish statesman tells the world that the Norwegian 
constitution is bad, because Aristotle and Cicero, Bacon and 
Machiavelli, Montesquieu and Madison, Jeremy Benlham and 
Sismondi, Tocqueville and Guizot, and himself, are all master- 
minds, who have declared that "a national representation, formed 
in one democratical chamber, will fall into frequent mistakes ; 
will, by its single position against royalty, get into conflict with 
it, which must either lead to absolutism, or, what is still worse, to 
anarchy;" and, moreover, this Swedish master-mind tells the 
world, that the division of the Norwegian representative assembly 



PREFACE. 13 

into two chambers is insufficient to take it out of this anathema 
of great authorities against a single democratic chamber. 

Mr. Laing's reply to all this array of authorities is a simple 
reference to the facts — contradict them who can — that this Nor- 
wegian constitution has been in operation now for a quarter of a 
century, going on smoothly, unless when the royal finger is laid 
hold of by the Swedish counselors of his majesty, and unad- 
visedly thrust into the machinery, when it gets an ugly squeeze 
and is precipitately withdrawn. This practical working of the 
legislative machine in the Norwegian constitution is held by Mr. 
Laing to be worth all the master-mind nostrums and theories of 
speculative philosophers, from Aristotle, Bacon, and Jeremy Ben- 
tham, down to this pamphleteer. In this constitution there is an 
effective check upon absolutism, from the legislative body in it 
having a self-existence independent altogether of the will of the 
executive power. It is elected and constituted, siio jure, once in 
three years, without writ or warrant being necessary from the 
king. It has a check upon anarchy, from the simple principle 
that no alteration in the constitution can be adopted by the same 
legislative assembly in which it is proposed. Every alteration 
must be proposed in one storthing, and taken into consideration, 
and adopted or rejected, by the next storthing : that is, by a new 
legislative assembly, after a lapse of three years, during which 
the proposed alteration has been before the nation at large, and 
is fully discussed and understood by all. The efficiency of these 
checks, against absolutism at least, has been pretty well tried in 
the present reign. Bat, says this Swedish political philosopher, 
the second or upper chamber of this legislative body, elected out 
of the mass of representatives, is an abomination in the Norwegian 
constitution. He tells us that, in the last storthing, the lagthing, or 
upper chamber, actually consisted of" peasants, non-commissioned 
officers, parish clerks, provincial vaccinators, and the rest lawyers, 
and attorneys," instead of counts and barons, with a pennyworth 
of red ribbon at their button-holes, or of dukes, lords, and bishops. 
*'And is this," exclaims the Swedish statesman, in aristocratic ire, 
•'•the chamber Mr Laing presumes to compare with the British 
house of peers?" Mr. Laing would just presume to whisper in 
his ear, that as an upper or deliberative chamber in the legisla- 
ture, as a body of legislators of the same class and with the same 
interests as the legislatccs, and therefore capable of judging of the 



14 PREFACE. 

suitableness of the laws sent up to them from the lower chamber 
for their consideration, this same upper chamber may well be 
compared with the British house of peers, or the Swedish house 
of nobles, and be admitted, too, to be, in the principle of its con- 
struction, superior to either for legislative purposes, and better 
constituted for wise legislation. But, says this master-mind of 
sixty-five pages of foolscap, this upper chamber in the Norwegian 
storthing has no effective veto upon the measures of the lower 
chamber, or main body of the national representatives — has no 
obstructive power in the constitution. Mr. Laing would again 
whisper in his ear, that this is exactly its merit. It has a suffi- 
cient suspensive power to prevent hasty enactments, a sufficient 
deliberative power to examine the bearings and effects of every 
measure, to amend, to reject, until its own views are again con- 
sidered in the lower chamber, but has no obstructive power. It 
cannot, like the British house of peers, or SwedisTi house of nobles, 
be made the tool of any aristocratic faction to obstruct all useful 
public measures that clash with the interests of a privileged few. 
It has, in the legislative machinery, a sufficient suspensive, de- 
liberative, amending power, but no obstructive power; and the 
British house of peers ought to have no more. True it is, that 
this upper chamber of the Norwegian storthing is composed of 
very ordinary vulgar fellows — just such people, indeed, as those 
for whom they are acting. Compare them, forsooth, to the cham- 
ber of nobles in a Swedish diet — a chamber composed, in one 
diet, since the acquisition of the Norwegian crown by the Swedish 
monarch, of sixty-seven ensigns and lieutenants, forty-nine cap- 
tains, one hundred and five colonels, lieutenant-colonels, and 
majors, thirty-eight chamberlains, twelve presidents or vice-pre- 
sidents of departments, tv/elve prefects, and twenty in various 
other court offices— -in all, four hundred and seventy-live govern- 
ment functionaries, out of a chamber of four hundred and ninety- 
two members ! Yet, Mr. Laing would quietlj^ask — in a whisper 
— in which of these two legislative chambers will we find men 
who betrayed the king to v/hom they had sworn allegiance — 
who sold the crown of their native race of sovereigns — which, 
if the sovereign who wore it was incapable or unworthy to reign, 
should, on every principle, radical or conservative, have ultimately 
devolved on his infant heir— to a foreigner— and who delivered 



PREFACE. 15 

up to the enemy for money the finest provinces of the realm, the 
strongest fortresses and positions in Europe ? 

But this Norwegian constitution is too democratic in one page 
of this statesman hke pamphlet, and too little so in the next. He 
complains that the representative is not elected directly by the 
people in Norway, but by their election-delegates. It is certainly 
an evil of this intermediate wheel between the constituency and 
the representative, that the public takes less interest in the elections 
than where they appoint their representatives by direct election. 
This disadvantage of the system of election-men was pointed out 
by Mr. Laing. He also pointed out its important advantages. 
It defeats all attempts at bribery, all undue influence over the 
electors, and is, in reality, the only system, except the vote by 
ballot, which secures the purity of election. Time alone — that 
greatest of all political philosophers — can discover whether this 
system be or be not good. In the peculiar situation of Norway, 
with a corrupt Swedish aristocracy eager to use all the royal power 
and patronage for the end of obtaining an influence in the legis- 
lative body of Norway, and an exclusive management of her 
atFairs, the system of electing representatives through election- 
men works admirably. Influence, intimidation, or bribery, cannot 
get through a double row of electors ; and that of the immediate 
electors, the election-men, not known, until (hey are assembled to 
act for their constituents in the election of a suitable representative. 
No wonder such a system is too much and too little of a demo- 
cracy to suit the Swedish nobility gaping for posts, and places, and 
public money, from the executive branch of the joint governments. 
Mr. Laing replies to all the observations upon the theoretical 
defects of the Norwegian constitution, with the simple facts — 
that the people living under it are undeniably in a state of high 
and progressive prosperity ; their trade, shipping, exports, imports, 
industry, well-being, and property, rapidly increasing ; while the 
commerce, shipping, and physical and moral condition of Sweden 
are notoriously not advancing. That their taxes are reduced — 
their debt paid olf— their money good in alt countries — their credit 
excellent ; and, above all, with the fact that the Norwegian people 
are content with their constitution as it is, while Sweden and Don- 
mark are both clamorous for a constitution similar to it. How 
comes it, he asks, that a committee of the Swedish diet, now 
assembled, recommends a reform of the Swedish constitution, and 



16 PREFACE. 

that one single representative assembly be elected without distinc- 
tion of privileged classes, and that the second or upper chamber 
be elected out of and by this representative assembly ? This is 
exactly the principle of the Norwegian constitution ; and this is 
the substance of the report of the committee of the present diet, 
appointed to consider the reforms necessary in the constitution of 
Sweden. Denmark, also, is at this moment in a state of great 
excitement — the nation almost peremptorily demanding a consti- 
tution from their new sovereign — a constitution similar to that of 
their late fellow-subjects. And why? Because, while they are 
pressed to the earth with taxes, and public expenditure, and a 
wasteful irresponsible government, they see their former fellow- 
subjects happy and flourishing. A constitution which those who 
live under it are contented with, and those who live around it 
■envy, and are intent upon obtaining one similar for themselves, 
may well do without the approbation of the aristocracy of Sweden. 
But as the prosperity of Norway under its present constitution is 
not to be denied — is notorious to all Europe— is loudly proclaimed 
in every sea-port which has relations of trade with that kingdom 
— our Swedish pamphleteer slyly changes his ground, and insinu- 
ates, that this undeniable prosperity is not owing at all to the 
liberal constitution of Norway, to the general difl'usion of property 
among her people, to the wisdom, intelligence, and Joseph Hume- 
like economy of her native legislators in expending the public 
money, but to Sweden ! And why? Because Sweden keeps up 
a puppet-show of a court, a diplomacy, an army of many officers, 
a navy, and apes the establishments of a great power without the 
means to support them. Norway, he says, is spared all this ex- 
pense of establishments for defence or display as a nation, and 
therefore is flourishing at the expense of Sweden. The Norwe- 
gian storthing is certainly wise enough to see, that the people of 
Norway have property to defend, a constitution worth fighting 
for, and a sovereign to whom, as the head of that constitution, 
they are as zealously attached as his foolish attempts to subvert 
it will permit them to be ; and, peasants though they be, have 
political tact enough to estimate much more justly than the Swed- 
ish cabinet, their real position among the European states ; to 
see that their safety, independence, and importance, depend not 
upon the half dozen regiments and frigates which they could 
maintain, and still less upon an army of noble officers without 



PREFACE. 17 

men, strutting about the streets in idleness, demoralizing the town 
populations, and devouring the means of the people, but upon 
the commercial relations of their conntrj^ which bind it, and its 
safety, independence, and present constitution, with the interests of 
European commerce, so that a shock now given to Norway would 
be felt on every exchange in Europe, from Naples to Archangel. 
They act with far more political wisdom, in expending as little as 
possible of the means of the people in taxes, to support an idle 
show of military and naval power, and in putting their country 
in the best state of defence which their real means permit them 
to do, viz., that in which the people have rights and property to 
fight for — arms in their hands to fight with— and a sufficient but 
not oppressive military organization to defend their own rocks 
against direct invasion ; but resting the defence of their national 
independence, as all secondary powers must do, not upon their 
own military power, but upon the intimate junction of their in- 
terests, industry, independence, and government, with those of 
greater powers. 

Which country is in the best state of defence ? Norway, with 
little or nothing of an army, navy, diplomacy, and no privileged 
class of nobility, but with its industry, commerce and welfare 
binding it up with those of every trading nation in Europe ? or 
Sweden, isolated politically and commercially compared to Nor- 
way ; and with the hereditary ties of a nation to its sovereign 
broken by a venal court faction, its crown upon the head of a 
foreigner ignorant of the language of ciyil affairs of the country 
he governs, its idle dissolute nobility living as useless military, 
civil, or courtly functionaries upon the means of the people, and 
looked upon by the people, since their sale of Finland, and of their 
native race of princes, as quite capable of betraying every interest 
but their own ; and the people themselves, driven by misgovern- 
ment and oppressive military arrangements into poverty and its 
natural consequence, over-multiplication ; into drunkenness, and 
its natural consequence, immorality ? Which country is the best 
governed — that in which the people are governed by their own 
laws, and employ their own time and labour on their own pro- 
perty, to their own advantage? or that in which the people are 
without any real voice in the legislature, are oppressed with 
taxes, to support military and civil establishments altogether ri- 
diculous in the present political state of European powers, their 



18 " PREFACE. 

time and labour wasted in military drills and shows for the grati- 
fication of a body of moustachioed nobility as officers, numerous 
enough to command all the armies of a first-rate power, and to 
exhaust the finances of such a third-rate power as Sweden, even 
without men to command ? 

This writer seems to depend upon the gullibility of the English 
nation, its proverbial ignorance of all foreign countries, and its 
good-natured readiness to believe whatever is told it by those who 
are in a situation to know the truth. It enters not into the con- 
ception or character of our public to doubt that a broad assertion 
can be false. This writer broadly asserts, that the Swedish people 
enjoy a free representative constitution ; yet at this very moment, 
the committee of the diet itself recommends the abolition of the 
present constitution, if such a thing as the diet can be called a 
constitution, and instead of it, that a fair representation of the 
people of all classes, and not merely of nobility, clergy, burgesses, 
and a small portion of peasantry, be given to the nation. He 
asserts that the press in Sweden is free : if so, why was Captain 
Lindenberg condemned to death ? Why is Mr. Crusenstolpe suf- 
fering imprisonment in a fortress? Why is the newspaper the 
most generally diffused bearing on its title the Twenty-fifth Aften- 
blad, that is to say, it has been suppressed twenty-four times by 
an arbitrary censorship? Gullible the English public undoubtedly 
is; and, in the eyes of diplomatists of a third-rate order, it may 
be a virtue to deceive the public ; to give an importance to small 
things and little minds in kingly station ; to confound the right 
and the moral in political affairs for the purpose of supporting a 
poor faction of nobility in a systematic oppression of the people. 
But the public seldom errs in its judgment, when it has the means 
of judging : the means of judging are before the British public : 
viz., the analysis of the Swedish diet, the historical facts of the 
conduct of the Swedish nobility in their surrender of Finland ; 
in their court intrigues, by which Charless XIII. seized the throne 
of his brother's children ; and. in their transfer of the crown from 
a native race of kings to a foreigner of second-rate military repu- 
tation in this age, ignorant of the language, people, and institu- 
tions, and without any other real recommendation to the throne 
of the Vasa dynasty than that he would be a more convenient 
tool in the hands of the faction that disposed of it, than its legiti- 
mate heir. 



PREFACE. 19 

These are the means of forming a judgment, which, in this 
country at least, are before the public. "The Foreign Quarterly 
Review" has lately, in an able article, recapitulated the historical 
facts. "The Annual Register," and the numerous other collec- 
tions and narratives of the public affairs and documents of this 
eventful century, give the British public, at least, the means of 
forming a judgment upon the statements and opinions of Mr 
Laing's work, which this writer controverts with his bare un- 
supported assertion. The consistency or inconsistency of Mr. 
Laing's political opinions is as unimportant to the public as Mr. 
Laing is himself. This poor tool of a faction of Swedish nobility 
cannot understand, it seems, how a man can advocate liberal 
opinions, and, at the same time, legitimate opinions. He does not 
comprehend — and how should the noble who sees only his party, 
and his small party-objects or advantages, in every public ques- 
tion, and not the moral and political right or wrong, the social 
good or evil, how should he comprehend — that the liberal is far 
more conservative than the aristocrat ? The liberal seeks only the 
preservation of each power in the state — the executive, the legis- 
lative, the administrative— by confining each to its legitimate 
province. He would strip the executive power of legislative 
authority, because the usurpation endangers the safety, and de- 
stroys the utility of the executive itself: he would purify the legis- 
lative authority from the admixture of executive with legislative 
influence exercised by the oligarchy of a nobilhy : he would 
establish the throne upon its proper rights, and make it, as the 
executive power in the state, independent of factions of nobility, 
and of military power : ho would respect the legitimate succession 
to the legitimate rights of sovereign power ; and if, unhappily, any 
individual in the line of succession should break the original con- 
tract with the people, he would resist, depose, bring to trial, and 
even to the scaffold, the individual monarch guilty of such mis- 
government; and would establish such a constitution as would 
render the personal character of the future sovereigns of little 
importance in the government of the country, for any evil to the 
comnumity ; but he would not alienate and sell the crown of his 
native land, and his native race of sovereigns; nor suffer a faction 
of nobility to dispose of it to a foreigner alien in religion, alien in 
language, alien in habits, for tlieir own interests and advantages. 
The liberal is the real conservative of the monarchical principle; 



20 PREFACE. 

in Europe : the aristocrat is only the conservative of the influence, 
privilege, and power of a faction around the throne, as dangerous 
to the monarch as it is useless to the people. The history of 
Sweden, since the usurpation of the late deposed king's uncle, 
Charles XIII., is a memorable instance, in modern history, of the 
working of a government called into existence by an aristocracy, 
and conducted by an aristocracy for its own advantages and in- 
terests as a privileged class : it shows the legitimate sovereigns 
of Europe what they and their families have to expect from their 
conservative nobility, where the voice of the people is not heard, 
and their right to a share in the legislature is usurped by the fac- 
tions of the privileged orders. Had the voice of the Swedish 
people been heard, the race of its ancient sovereigns, under con- 
stitutional restrictions on the abuse of monarchical power, would 
at this day have been on the Swedish throne. The Swedish 
nation would as soon have thought of electing Tom Thumb the 
Great for their sovereign, as a French general, whose name not 
one in a thousand liad ever heard of in Sweden, and whose 
wliole life and career, however distinguished, whether great or 
little, had been totally unconnected with Swedish interests or 
honour, and were connected only with a few needy intriguing 
Swedish nobles in Paris who had no stake at home. Sweden, in 
this age, is as badly defended by her nobility in the fields of 
literature, as of war. 

The other statement of Mr. Laing, which it would be interest- 
ing to the public, and important to political science, to see fairly 
met and refuted, or else fairly admitted, is that Sweden, with a 
population almost entirely agricultural, not manufacturing or 
commercial, with a powerful church establishment undisturbed 
by dissent or sectarianism, and with national education, as far as 
regards reading, writing, and the first principles of religion, very 
widely diffused, is notv/ithstanding in a more demoralized state 
than any country in Europe — more demoralized even than any 
equal portion of the British manufacturing population — stands, 
in short, at the very bottom of the scale of European morality. 
The copclusion which Mr. Laing draws from this is, that bad 
government, bad laws, bad social arrangements, unjust or une- 
qual political rights and civil condition enjoyed by privileged 
classes at the expense and to the oppression of the great body of 
the people,'the want of free agency as moral beings, by the iu- 



PREFACE. 21 

terference of a military government with the time, labour, in- 
dustry, and doings of the people, reducing them to the slate of a 
soldiery in country quarters, are such demoralizing influences in 
civil society, that even a powerful church establishment, and an 
effective system of national education, cannot counteract their 
tendency. Mr. Laing's conclusions must depend upon tlie truth 
of his statements. His statements are clearly and distinctly made. 
They do not rest upon his personal observations, or experiences 
as a traveler. He justly, it is conceived, observes, that the merely 
personal observation of the traveler, however good his opportuni- 
ties, or long his experience of what he remarks in his own con- 
fined circle, as a stranger, is of no value whatsoever, either for 
establishing or refuting such a statement as he ventures to make 
respecting Sweden. Mr. Laing states that he makes it upon 
documentary evidence, upon the official returns of the Swedish 
minister of justice, of the crimes committed within a given year, 
1836, compared with the official criminal lists of other countries 
for the same year. Here, one would surely say, there can be no 
room for a conflict of opinions, or a reference to authorities. 
Here are facts to be admitted or denied, and facts only. Here is 
a list of specified crimes — murders, poisonings, unnatural crimes, 
robberies, thefts, or whatever they may be — committed in one 
country, to be compared with a list of the very same crimes com- 
mitted, during the very same period of time, in another country. 
Are these lists true or false? Here is no room, surely, to rebut 
officially specified crimes, with the opinions of the Marquis of 
Bute, Lord Strangford, Lord Fitzgerald, Lord Bloomfield, Lord 
Castlereagh, Lord Howard de Walden, Honourable J. D. Bligh, 
Sir Thomas Cartwright, Honourable J. Bloomfield, &c. Opinion 
against opinion, it may be reasonably doubted, whether observers 
in their rank, and necessarily confined in their intercourse, to one 
class of society, are in a position, however long they may have 
resided in the country, so favourable for forming just opinions 
on its moral condition, as an obscure ordinary traveler like Mr. 
Laing. But here are facts specified, facts officially established. 
Of what value against these facts arc the opinions of any number 
of diplomatic lords, or traveling gentlemen ? Is it pretended that 
their opinions should be received rather than facts ? This may be 
a privilege, perhaps, of Swedish nobility, and diplomatists; but, 
in this country, opinions pass for no more than they arc worth; 



22 PREFACE. 

that is, for nothing at all, in opposition to facts established on 
authentic official documents. 

But this writer quotes opinions of more weight. He states it 
to be the opinion of Mr. M'Cnlloch, and also of the editor of 
" The Polytechnic Journal," that the mere amount of commit- 
tals or punishments for criminal offences in different countries, 
gives no just view of their relative moral state, because offences 
against police regulations, involving in them no moral delinquency, 
maybe classed as criminal offences and punished as such, in some 
countries, and altogether passed over, or at least not included, in 
the criminal calendar of other countries. Without stopping to 
consider the demoralizing effects of such an indiscriminating sys- 
tem of law and raisgovernment, that mere police transgressions, 
such, for instance, as a peasant appearing too late at a posting 
station with his horses to drive an impatient noble to the next 
stage for an inadequate recompense, are treated and punished as 
moral offences ; and without stopping to consider the demoraliz- 
ing influence of such a system of police and criminal regulation 
together, that one person in every 112| of the whole population, 
infants, females, sick and aged inclusive, could be accused, and 
one in 134 convicted and punished — for there is a moral degra- 
dation in being accused, convicted, and punished, even for mere 
police transgressions— it is, Mr. Laing observes, '< not upon the 
amount of committals and punishments, to which the opinion of 
those enlightened statistical writers specially refers, that he founds 
his statement." He comes to close quarters. He does not merely 
state that in 1836, out of every 134 persons, women, infants, aged, 
sick, all included, one person had been convicted : lie specifies the 
crimes themselves, the number of murders, of robberies, of of- 
fences against nature, of poisonings, of fire-raisings, of thefts. He 
gives the number of those specified crimes in the official lists, 
which no juggle about classification of offences, or about police 
regulations, can in any way diminish, or exaggerate, as acts in- 
volving the highest moral guilt; and he asks if any other com- 
munity in Europe, of the same population, has produced so many 
criminal offences of the same moral guilt within the same period? 
He does not merely state the gross number of crimes in all Swe- 
den, but he takes one or two distinct provinces, as Gothland, 
Geflelan, Stockholm, and gives the number of people implicated, 
and the number of murders, robberies, and other crimes commit- 



PREFACE. 23 

ted, in the year 1S.3G, and asks if such a criminal list in the same 
year can be produced from the most disturbed province of Ire- 
land, or the most depraved portion of the manufacturing popula- 
tion of England ? This Swedish moralist appeals to the Scotch 
nation, whether, if they " were placed in a jury box in an action 
against Mr. Laing for libeling the Swedish nation, they would 
not pronounce the verdict of 'giiilli/.'" Before pronouncing 
their verdict, they would be requested by Mr. Lamg to read the 
following list of crimes committed in 1S38, within the kingdom 
of Sweden, carrying in their minds that the population of this 
kingdom is little, if at all, greater than that of Scotland ; that its 
metropolis contains about half the population of Edinburgh, viz., 
75,000 people ; and that it has no Glasgow, no manufacturing 
population, no influx of strangers. Mr. Laing takes the official 
returns of the Swedish minister of justice for 1S38, being a return 
later in date by two years than that upon which he founded his 
statement of the low moral condition of the Swedish nation in his 
*' Tour in Sweden." 

In 1838, then, 26,357 men and 3626 women have been prose- 
cuted for criminal offence; being 1 person in every 161 of the 
whole population. Of this number, 22,005 men and 3013 women 
have been condemned ; 3191 men and 398 women acquitted ; and 
the rest, at the date of the report, 18th December, 1839, were still 
under trial. Among the crimes tried in the country courts, were 
twenty-eight cases of murder, for which thirty-one men and eight 
women were condemned; further, twelve cases of child-murder, 
and twelve women condemned for this crime ; further, seven cases 
of poisoning, and three men and live women condemned for this 
crime. Besides these capital crimes tried in the country courts, 
there were tried in the town courts, one murder, committed by one 
man ; one case of incendiarism and murder, by a woman ; and 
one case of murder, robbery, and incendiarism united. We have 
here, of capital crimes involving human life, in this population of 
less than 3,000,000, fifty cases, and sixty-two persons condemned 
for murder. Is this our proportion in Scotland of this crime? Is 
there any classification of offences, any juggle between police 
transgressions and criminal olTence, by which this amount of 
crime of the most heavy description may be explained away ? 
But, further, we have six cases of violent robbery, and ten men 
and one woman condemned for this crime ; also, sixteen cases of 



24 PREFACE. 

perjury, and twenty persons condemned ; farther, four cases of 
incendiarism, and two men and two women condemned. The 
inquisition, too — the church establishment — has had its victims 
through the arm of the civil courts : twenty-one persons con- 
demned for contempt of the pubUc church service. We have not 
yet done. We have 126 cases of theft repeated three or more 
times, and 104 men and 19 women condemned under this indict- 
ment ; also, 274 cases of theft twice repeated, and 340 men and 
41 women condemned ; 947 cases of theft for the first time, and 
833 men and 205 women condemned ; and, besides all this, 478 
cases of petty thefts, and 397 men and 118 women condemned. 
But we have not exhausted this record of Swedish morality. We 
are only in the country courts. In the town courts, besides the 
three cases of murder and incendiarism before mentioned, there 
have been tried 112 cases of forgery, and 105 men and 18 women 
condemned ; 892 cases of theft, and 907 persons condemned ; 479 
cases of petty theft, and 596 persons condemned. In the year 
1838, the number of persons condemned to death for capital of- 
fences has been sixty-eight-, of whom nineteen have been exe- 
cuted, and forty-nine pardoned, or sentence commuted. Is this 
the proportion of capital offences, and of executions, in one year 
in Scotland ? Is Mr. Laing confounding mere police transgressions 
with moral offences in this statement ? In 1838, the divorces — 
no inexpressive test of the morality of a people — were 147 ; viz., 
ninety-five at the instance of husbands, and fifty-two of wives. 
One hundred and seventy-two cases of suicide came under the 
cognizance of the local authorities in all Sweden, in 1838. Now 
are these of the description of crimes which any classification, or 
non-classification, can take out of the catalogue of moral delin- 
quency, and range under the head of police transgression only — of 
infractions of conventional regulation involving no moral delinquen- 
cy ? Is there at this day any civilized community in Europe with 
such a frightful list of crime for the year 1838, in every 3,000,000 of 
its population ? Is Mr. Laing guilty, or not guilty, of a libel on the 
Swedish nation, when he places it at the bottom of the moral list in 
Europe ? If the Scotchman acquainted with the moral condition 
of Scotland, were to answer the appeal of this Swedish writer to 
find Mr. Laing guilty of a libel on the moral character of the 
Swedish nation, Saunders would probably take a snuff, and 



PREFACE. 25 

quietly observe, that there are nations, as well as individuals, 
whom it would be very difficult to libel. 

This moralist seems to be particularly shocked at Mr. Laing's 
statement, that the Swedish population, at least the town popula- 
tions of Sweden, is remarkably unchaste. Mr. Laing states that 
the proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births in Stockholm is 
as 1 to 2^^, while in London and Middlesex it is 1 to 3S legitimate 
births; and in Paris 1 to 5, and in the other French towns 1 to 
75. Mr. Laing admits that he has here made a mistake — a very 
important mistake — in his statement ; but it happens to be a mis- 
take in understating instead of overstating the amQunt of illegiti- 
macy in Stockholm in one year. In the year 1838, there were 
born in Stockholm 2714 children, and of those 1577 were legi- 
timate, and 1137 were illegitimate, making a balance of only 440 
chaste mothers out of 2714: so that instead of 1 illegitimate birth 
for every 2^-^ legitimate, it is actually 1 illegitimate for every H 
legitimate. In the town populations of Sweden, Stockholm not 
included, there were ,born 4083 legitimate and 926 illegitimate 
children in 1838, so that there the proportion is about 1 illegi- 
timate to 4 legitimate births. Now these are, in general, petty 
country towns, without manufactures or commerce, towns of 
three or four thousand inhabitants. Is it the state of morals in 
our small towns, that 1 illegitimate child is born for every 4 legi- 
timate ? Aberdeen approaches nearer in population to Stockholm 
than Edinburgh. In Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, 
in any town in Christendom, is the proportion of bastards to legi- 
timate children as 1 to li .'' It is in vain to quote the opinion of 
the editor of "The Polytechnic Journal," that the returns of ille- 
gitimate births in the towns of England and Wales are or may 
be, erroneous— that London and Middlesex swarm with prosti- 
tutes, so that, in reality, the male sex may be quite as unchaste 
there as in Stockholm. The plain common sense of every man 
tells him, that such an enormous proportion of illegitimate births 
proves that the want of chastity in the female sex is not confined, 
as in London, to an outcast class of females, but is spread very 
widely over the female community of other classes, among whom, 
with us, a breach of chastity is of very rare occurrence. All the 
Swedish moralists and polytechnic journalists in the world will 
not make out that a nation is in a high moral condition with one 
3 



2& PREFACE, 

unchaste for every fcrar chaste mothers in the small towns, and 
two unchaste for every three chaste mothers in its metropolis. 

This writer passes over in pradeut silence the enormous pro- 
portion of the population of this metropolis which has gone io 
the course of a year through the public hospital, via., 1 in every 
6O/0 of unmarried adults, for the treatment of an infamous dis- 
ease ; and also the attempt of this moral government a few years 
ago, to establish brothels, either as a financial or as a sanatary 
speculation. Mr. Laing is conscious that he has fully established 
by the official returns for 1838, which he now quotes, as well as 
by those for J 836, which he quoted in his " Tour in Sweden," 
that Sweden stands at present at the bottom of the moral scale of 
Europe, that chastity is not a Swedish virtue, and that he is not 
guilty of a libel on the Swedish nation in publishing their own 
official returns of the crimes committed among them in 1836, and 
now in 183S, and drawing obvious unavoidable inferences fr»m 
them of the very low moral condition of Sweden. 

What may be the causes of this frightfully demoralized state of 
a country in which the church establishment and the educational 
system are vigorous and effective ? This silly pamphleteer would 
insinuate that Mr. Laing attributes the demoralized state of the 
Swedish nation to religion and education : M?. Laing attributes 
it now, and in his " Tour in Sweden," distinctly to misgovern- 
ment, and to the privileged classes in the social structure of Swe- 
den keeping down all free agency as moral beings among the 
people, reducing them to the state of a soldiery with regulations, 
interference, and conventional laws and observances, instead of 
moral duties to guide them, and liable, like a soldiery, to fall into 
excesses and transgressions of all civil duties, when occasion- 
ally escaping from the kind of military surveillance of the public 
functionary. 

The Swedish people are not vicious naturally. No people are 
so. But they are not treated by their government as free agents. 
Their time, labour, industry, property, are interfered with, and 
taken from them by government and its functionaries, by privi- 
leged classes, by a greedy and poor nubility living upon the taxes. 
They have consequently the vices of men who are not free agents 
— not bred under moral restraint, but under discipline, police 
regulation, or conventioual restraint. In spite of religious and 
educational establishments, they are demoralized by misgovern- 



PREFACE. 27 

menl, bad laws, and a faulty structure of society ; and Mr. Laing 
draws, from the striking moral condition of this people, the im- 
portant conclusion, that the cause of reform is the cause of mo- 
rality ; that the pious and good men among us who would make 
every sacrifice for the diffusion of education and religious instruc- 
tion among the people, yet oppose every innovation or reform in 
the civil institutions and government of the country, are involved 
in contradiction and inconsistency. The very remarkable dimi- 
nution of crime in Ireland, which accompanied the more libe- 
ral administration of government under the Whig ministry, the 
equal bearing of law at present towards the Catholic and Pro- 
testant population, strengthens this conclusion, proves that national 
morality is more intimately connected with good, even-handed, 
liberal government, and the equal rights of all in the social sys- 
tem than with the religious and educational establishments of a 
country. The latter, as moral influences, are inefficient without 
the former. 

This writer attributes the immorality of Sweden, which after 
a long juggle with opinions and authorities against facts, he is 
forced to admit, to the drunkenness of the people, and their 
drunkenness again to the too powerful spirit of democi'acy in the 
Swedish constitution, by which the peasantry " enjoy the right to 
distil their own brandy as freely as to make their own soup." 
In the Swedish diet — this too liberal, too democratic assembly — 
there are three chambers, besides that of the peasantry — the 
chamber of nobles, of clergy, and of the burgesses of corporate 
towns, each of which can stop any prejudicial or any beneficial 
act proposed in any other chamber, and hinder it passing into a 
law. How comes it that this excessive and demoralizing right of 
every man to distil brandy at his pleasure, passed into a law 
through these three conservative chambers, any one of which 
could have stopped it? Is it that the nobility, clergy, and privi- 
leged shop-keepers get their rents, their church dues, their shop 
accounts, better paid ; and, therefore, they allow this universal 
distillation among the people, have no objection to a demoralizing 
influence provided it fills their purses? If the Swedish clergy and 
nobility sincerely believe that the general depravity, the low moral 
condition of the Swedish nation proceeds from drunkenness fos- 
tered by this general unchecked distillation of spirits, why do 
they not restrain, or at least propose a law to restrain, this right 



28 PREFACE. 

of distillation ? They themselves furnish the proof that their diet 
is merely a meeting of delegates of certain privileged bodies, 
for the purpose of legislating for their own advantage, without 
regard to the morality, well-being, or prosperity of the country. 
But to consider drunkenness as the cause of the low rhoral state 
of the Swedish nation is like the reasoning of the murderer Coiir- 
voisier, who held that his petty theft of his master's silver spoons 
was the cause of his midnight murder of his master; and that 
the deeper crime v/as only a consequence of his theft, necessary 
to conceal it. 

Drunkenness is the cause of crime bat too often in the indi- 
vidual ; but it is the effect of a low and degraded moral state of 
the national mind and habits, that individuals drink to excess. It 
is not, as this writer supposes, a necessary consequence of the 
people enjoying "the right to distil their brandy as freely as to 
make their soup," that the people should be addicted to excessive 
drinking, and become demorahzed. The people of Switzerland 
enjoy the right to distil as freely as the people of Sweden, and 
have much better stuff to distil and make spirits of; but they are 
not addicted to excessive drunkenness; they are not demoralized 
by this democratic liberty to distil what they please, and as much 
as they please. But, then, they are free agents in all things, as 
well as in distillation ; they are men under moral restraint in all 
their doings, not under functionary regulation. The difference of 
race, or the difference of climate, must not be alleged as sufficient 
to account for the Sunss peasant being, with a perfectly free distil- 
lation of his wines, his cherries, his barley, a sober moral man, and 
the Swede the reverse. The Swiss peasant in Haslethal con- 
siders himself to this day a descendant from a Swedish stock ; 
and the language, mode of building their dwellings, personal ap- 
pearance, and habits of living in that district, furnish many strik- 
ing proofs that the tradition is not without some foundation — that 
the races may have been originally the same. The climate of Swe- 
den is to be found in the upper end of every alpine valley ; but, 
in Switzerland, the free distillation does not demoralize the peo- 
ple ! And why ? Because the people have rights, have freedom ; 
are not enslaved by privileged bodies of clergy, nobility, and 
merchants, and by a government acting entirely for the interest of 
these privileged bodies, and with no ties to the mass of the nation 
but those which military and civil functionaries can create; with 



PREFACE. 29 

no support in the feelings of the people, in their hereditary attach- 
ments, or prejudices, or principles, and therefore a mere tool in 
the hands of the privileged classes who set up the puppet, and 
pull the strings by which it moves, nods, and gives signs of in- 
telligence and approbation to whatever they whisper in its ear. 

This writer is obliged to distort, misrepresent, and falsify the 
opinions he endeavours to refute, in order to answer them. He 
ascribes to Mr. Laing the opinion that, '' to procure sugar and 
coffee cheaper for Russia, Norway and Sweden should bs incor- 
porated with Russia." He says, « This enlightened and patriotic 
Scotchman wants to establish Russia opposite to the very coasts 
of Scotland, and would make Russia a first-rate naval power, on 
purpose to procure cheaper coffee and sugar for her serfs." Now, 
what is the fact ? Mr. Laing says, it is no unreasonable object 
of ambition in Russia to get possession, if she can, of an ocean 
coast, through which her immense population may be supplied 
with those productions of the tropical climes — cottons, tobaccoes, 
sugar, coffee, &c, — which, in this age, are the main objects and 
stimulants of human industry and civilization — that this ocean- 
coast is the coast of the Scandinavian peninsula, which, if it fell 
into the hands of Russia, would at once raise her to a first-rate 
naval power, and would change the face of the civilized world — 
and that the defence of such a maritime position, of so important 
a stretch of ocean-coast, ought not to be left, as it would be by the 
amalgamation of Norway with Sweden, in the hands of a Swedish 
nobility, who had shown, in our times, that they were capable of 
selling to Russia the province of,Fiuland, with its Gibraltar, Swea- 
borg, which were t4ie main bulwarks of Europe, on this side, 
against Russia, and of selling the crov/n of their native race of 
princes to a foreigner. Mr. Laing's opinion, which this writer 
does not venture to quote fairly, is, that the nobility who sold, or 
permitted to be sold by a faction among themselves, the province 
of Finland, the islands of Aland,, the fortress of Sweaborg, and 
the troops under their command ; and who sold, or permitted to 
be sold, the crown of their native dynasty, without any constitu- 
tional amelioration, or any political or civil improvement in the 
condition of the people from the change, but solely for party ad- 
vantage, may be capital courtiers, excellent irdn manufacturers, 
may bear high-sounding titles, great historical names, and ribbons 
at their bulton-l:oles of all the colours of the rainbow, but arc not 



30 PREFACE. 

to be trusted with the defence of an European bulwark — that 
Norway and her coasts are safer in the hands of her independent 
noble peasantry, than of a nobility who have shown, in this age, 
that they are capable of betraying for money all that nobility hold 
sacred in other countries— the mihtary trusts reposed in them, the 
sovereign to whom they had sworn allegiance and pledged their 
honour, the crown of their native dynasty from whom their own 
titles and distinctions were derived by their ancestors. 

SAMUEL LAING, 
Edinburgh^ August^ 1843. 



m E r A c E 



FIRST EDITION 



The changes produced by the French Revolution in the social 
economy of the European people are so extensive and important, 
reaching downwards to the very foundation of the former feudal 
structure of society, that History, it may be truly said, only begins 
for posterity with this century. The monarchical, aristocratical, 
and ecclesiastical elements of the former social economy of Eu- 
rope, even property, law, power, have all been altered in relations, 
proportions, and intensity of influence; and the living of the gene- 
ration Avhich witnessed the commencement of the French Revo- 
lution have, in fifty years, been removed five hundred from the 
order of things previously established. The events and personages 
connected with this great convulsion will, no doubt, find their 
historian ; but the alterations produced by it in the social structure 
and arrangementsof almost every country are scarcely noticed by 
our travellers and political writers occupied with the more brilliant 
scenes or novelties of the age, and the future historian or philoso- 
pher may even want materials, notwithstanding all the literature 
of our days, for forming a just estimate of the amount, nature, 
and tendencies of the changes cfl'ected, or in progress, during this 
half-century, in the social economy of Europe. The Author of 
the following Notes has attempted in two preceding works— one 
on Norway,* and one on Swedent — to collect materials on the 

* Journal of a Residence in Norway, by Samuel Laiiig. Longmans, London, 

I A Tour in Sweden, by Samuel Laing. Longmans, 1839. 



32 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

social economy of those two countries, which, although distant 
from the centre of action, have not been beyond the reach of its 
disturbing force. This work is intended to be a continuation of 
the same attempt to collect materials for the future historian or 
philosopher who shall endeavour to describe and estimate the new 
social elements in Europe which are springing up from, and cov- 
ering the ashes of, the French Revolution. 

The author's encouragement to this work is great. His two 
former volumes have had a success of a kind which literary pro- 
duction of this humble class rarely attains. The one on Norway 
turned the public attention, both in England and on the Continent, 
to that interesting country and its liberal institutions, and assisted 
in raising around the Norwegian constitution an impregnable 
barrier of public opinion which the Swedish monarch and his 
cabinet are forced to respect. The Norwegian constitution guar- 
anteed to Norway by the Allied Powers, accepted of and sworn 
to by the Swedish monarch, and made known in all its circum- 
stances to the European public, cannot now be silently crushed 
by an unprincipled faction in Sweden as a mere provincial diet 
existing, as they pretended, only by the suflerance of the sovereign. 
The volume on Sweden has contributed to open the eyes of the 
Swedish nation to the demoralizing influences, in its social econo- 
my, of privileged governing classes, who, within memory of the 
living generation, assassinated one king, betrayed another, sold for 
money their military trusts in Finland to the enemy, and sold the 
crown of their native race of sovereigns to a foreigner. Great 
and loud was the indignation of those classes against the audacious 
traveller who had presumed to apply the test of right principle to 
these historical events in which they had been the agents, to hold 
up their misdeeds to the reprobation of the moral, the loyal, and 
the patriotic of every country, and to draw aside the tinsel robe 
of a third-rate military reputation, behind which they shelter 
themselves, and to expose the ignorance, disposition to arbitrary 
rule, and unfounded assumption of merit it conceals. The official 
published records of the yearly amount of crime in Sweden — that 
documentary, proof of the demoralizing influence on the Swedish 
people of the demoralized governing classes — could not be got 
rid of. In vain those classes attempted in controversial pamphlets 
to delude the public, to divert attention from the true scource 
of the evil, to palliate the undeniable excess of crime in Sweden, 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 33 

by alleging excess of drunkenness and excess of bad legislation, 
by which simple police transgressions, punished and recorded 
as crimes, swell the criminal record. They only proved what 
they attempted to deny — the misgovernment of privileged classes, 
who, confounding moral guilt with transgressions against their 
own conventional regulations in one demoralizing code and ad- 
ministration of law, brutalize the habits, and deaden the moral 
sentiments of the people under them. Swedish diplomacy itself 
— his Excellency Count Biornstierna, minister of his Swedish jNIa- 
jesty at the court of St. James's — condescended to satisfy the 
English public, that the allegations and views of the traveller 
were, to the fullest extent, correct and incontrovertible ; for his 
excellency published a pamphlet,* professing to be a refutation 
of " Mr. Laing's calumnies" and " libels against the Swedish 
nation," in which, with great success, his excellency confirms all 
he attempts to refute, and refutes all he attempts to confirm. The 
Swedish public, with the landmarks of their own published official 
records of crime from Year to year before their eyes, were not to 
be misled by their noble party writers. The late diet appointed 
a committee to report upon the social economy of the country, 
and the amendments necessary in the constitution. Their reporter 
recommends the abolition of the exclusive privileges and political 
powers of those classes which have in this age so signally betrayed 
the material interests, and corrupted the moml interests of their 
country — an answer in full, and from the Swedish people them- 
selves, to their noble diplomatic pamphleteer, who, to uphold the 
tottering power of his order, attempted, in the face of undeniable 
facts and official documehts, to persuade the world that Sweden 
is a country eminently moral, particularly well governed by its 
nobility and their hero-king, and quite contented with its present 
government. To have contributed in the most insignificant de- 
gree towards such beneficial movements of the public mind is a 
great literary success for such trivial literary productions. 

In this continuation of the same design of collecting materials 
which may enable the future historian to form a just estimate of 
the present political and social economy of some portions of the 
European people, the Author in these Notes pursues the same plan 

* Mr. Laing's Answer to Count Biomstiema's pamphlet appeared in tlui 
Monthly Chronicle for November, 1840, published by Longmans, London. 



34 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

as in the preceding volumes. Taking historical events, statistical 
facts, and his own observation in various tours, as a basis, he pro- 
ceeds from that basis straight forward to his conclusions in political 
or social economy, regardless of the theories, authorities, or opin- 
ions that may be jostled out of the road, or of the establishments, 
classes, or personages whose assumed merits, or false lustre, may 
be rubbed off in the collision and shock with truth and just 
principle. 

SAMUEL LAING, 
EpjNBiTBQH, January, 1842, 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER, 

&c. 



CHAPTER I. 

TRAVEL-WRITING.— HOLLAND.— THE SUBLIME IN SCENERY.— THE PIC- 
TURESQUE IN HOLLAND.— GARDEN HOUSES.— DECAY OF HOLLAND.— 
CAUSES OF DECAY.— COMMERCIAL DECLINE.— MANUFACTURING STA- 
BILITY.— USEFUL ARTS.— FINE ARTS.— USEFUL AND FINE ARTS COM- 
PARED.— USEFUL AND FINE ARTS.— THE POOR IN HOLLAND.— THE 
POOR IN MANUFACTURING TOWNS.— POOR COLONIES.— KINGLY POWER 
IN HOLLAND.— BELGIUM.— FEDERALISM.— UNION OF THE TWO COUN- 
TRIES. — THE FEDERAL PRINCIPLE. — ITS WORKING IN SWITZER- 
LAND. 

In the social state of the Continent, as it has settled itself since 
the great political and moral epoch of the French Revolution, 
there is a vast Held to explore, which has scarcely been looked at 
by our Continental travellers. No period since the introduction of 
Christianity will be considered by posterity of equal importance 
with this half of the nineteenth century — of equal influence in 
forming the future social and moral condition of the European 
people. All the great social influences, moral and physical, which 
have sprung up from the ashes of the French Revolution, and all 
the influences accumulating in prior times; — the diffusion of know- 
ledge by the press ; of sentiments of religious and civil freedom 
by the Reformation; of wealth, well-being, and political import- 
ance in the middle class, or those between the nobility and peas- 
antry of the feudal ages, by trade, manufactures, and industry ; 
the influence over all ranks, of acquired tastes, and wants un- 
known to their forefathers; the influence of public opinion over 
the highest political affairs; and the influence of all the vast disco- 
veries of the preceding four hundred years, in navigation, science 



36 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

and the useful arts ; — are, in reality, only coming into full play and 
operation now, in this half century, upon the social state of Europe. 
The French Revolution was but the first act in the great social 
drama. Travellers complain that travel-writing is overdone — 
that the Continent is exhausted of all its interest. Is it not possi- 
ble that they themselves are blind to the great interests and influ- 
ences which would attract the public mind ; that they are con- 
tinuing to feed the man with the panada and water-gruel of the 
child ? In these our locomotive days, the hurried public has no 
leisure to sit listening to the traveller of the old school, piping the 
little song of his personal adventures in countries as familiar to 
their imaginations as the county of York. He pours his tale into 
a sleeping ear, if he has nothing to pour but his personal feelings 
and adventures, or his voracious doings on the tea and toast of 
the village inn : he is like a blind beggar trying to amuse the chil- 
dren of the deaf and dumb asylum with a tune on his fiddle. 

I am' an excellent travel-reader myself. I eat, drink, and sleep, 
for my part, with my traveller. I mourn with him, by land, over 
all the calamities of jolting roads, saucy landlords, scanty dinners, 
and dirty table-cloths ; and am enchanted, at sea, with the gale, 
the calm, the distant sail, the piece of sea- weed floating past, the 
solitary sea-bird skimming round, and all the other memorabilia 
of a voyage across the Queensferry or the Atlantic. But this 
school of readers is almost extinct. The reading public of the 
present day labours under a literary dyspepsia, and has no appe- 
tite for the former ordinary fare. Diaries, journals, narratives, 
descriptions, feelings, and wisdom of the first quality, from every 
corner of the world, have so satiated the omnivorous reader, that 
results only, the concentrated essences of the traveller's observa- 
tions, are in demand, — not the detail of petty incidents by which 
they have been obtained ; the sums total and products, not the 
items and units of his account current. This fastidiousness of 
the public taste places the traveller, especially in well-known 
lands, in an awkward dilemma. The little trivialities of travel, 
duly recorded as they occur, were very agreeable writing and 
reading 5 although they certainly mix very discordantly with sta- 
tistical details or speculations on political and social economy, 
which not only the philosopher, or the historian, but the ordinary 
reader of the present day, expects from the Continental traveller. 
These are not the results or observations of a single incident, or a 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 37 

single forenoon, or a single tour, and cannot, with any truth, be 
interwoven in his accounts of any one day or place. He is 
obliged to concentrate his observations for the sake of truth, and 
to meet the public taste ; yet he runs the risk, in doing so, of pro- 
ducing a work which will lull to sleep, not amuse the reader. 
The risk must be run. A great field of inquiry and observation 
on the Continent is open. The traveller may not be the most suit- 
able literary labourer to explore it; but if his views should be 
narrow and incorrect, his conclusions ill-founded or egrogiously 
wrong, still they may be useful by inducing men of higher capa- 
city to take the same path, to examine the same subjects, and dis- 
cover what is right and well-founded. In political philosophy 
the road to truth lies through error. 

Holland, the land of cheese and butter, is to my eye no unpic- 
turesque, uninteresting country. Flat it is ; but it is so geome- 
trically only, and in no other sense. Spires, church towers, bright 
farm houses — their windows glancing in the sun ; long rows of 
willow trees— their bluish foliage ruffling up white in the breeze ; 
grassy embankments of a tender, vivid green, partly hiding the 
meadows behind, and crowded with glittering, gaudily painted 
gigs, and stool wagons, loaded with rosy-cheeked, laughing coun- 
try girls, decked out in ribbons o£ many more colours than the 
rainbow all a-streaming in the wind ;— these areihe objects which 
strike the eye of the traveller from seaward, and form a gay front 
view of Holland, as he sails or steams along its coast and up its 
rivers. On shore the long continuity of horizontal lines of coun- 
try in the back ground, each line rising behind the other to a dis- 
tant, level, unbroken horizon, gives the impression of vastness 
and of novelty. It is curious how diflereiUly we are impressed 
by expansion in the horizontal and expansion in the perpendicnlar 
plane. Take a section of this country spread out horizontally 
before the eye, four miles or five in length, and one or two in 
breadth, and it is but a flat, unimpressive plain. But elevate this 
small unimpressive parallelogram of land to an angle of sixty 
degrees with the horizon, and it becomes the most sublime of natu- 
ral objects ; it surpasses Mont Blanc— it is the side of Chimborazo. 
Set it on edge, and it would overwhelm the beholder with its 
snblimity. It would be the Hymalaya mountains cut down from 
their dizziest peak to the level of the ocean — a precipice so sub- 
lime, that the mind would shrink in terror from its very rccollec- 



38 NOTES OP A TRAVELLER. 

lion. Now why does this section of land, which would be but a 
small portion of the extent of fiat plain under the eye at once 
from any little elevation, such as a dyke or a church tower, in this 
country, pass from the unimpressive through the beautiful, the 
grand, and to the utmost sublime, by mathematical steps, one may 
say, and according to its angle of elevation ? The only solution 
of this fact in the sublimity of natural objects is, that terror is not, 
as has been assumed by Burke and our greatest philosophers, the 
cause of the impression of sublimity in the human mind. Terror 
must be the effect of the sublime ; not its cause, source, or prin- 
ciple. In this supposed instance of the sublime in nature, power 
is evidently the cause of that impression — the intuitive mental 
perception that great unknown power has been exerted to pro- 
duce this sublime object. It is the feeling, or impression, of this 
vast power, which produces that feeling of terror allied with and 
considered the cause, although in reality only the effect, of the sub- 
lime. This impression of power received from any great and rare 
deviation from the usual, makes the perpendicular more sublime 
than the horizontal, the Gothic cathedral than the Grecian temple, 
the movintain than the plain, the cataract than the lake, the storm 
than the calm. Unusual vastness, such as the great extent of flat 
country seen from any of the ^church towers in Holland, is also 
an expression of power, and is not without its grandeur ; but it 
never reaches the sublime, because the mind, accustomed to the 
sight of extension developed horizontally, perceives not the prin- 
ciple of power in it at once. This sentiment of power may pos- 
sibly have something to do even with our impression of the beau- 
tiful in natural objects. The waved line — Hogarth's line of beauty 
— is agreeable, and the angular, broken, or jagged line, the con- 
trary; because the one expresses a continuity of power in its for- 
mation — the other a disturbance, or break, in the action of the 
forming power. The latter would reach the sublime, if the dis- 
turbance, or break, were on a great scale, indicating vastness of 
power. 

Holland can boast of nothing sublime ; but for picturesque fore- 
grounds — for close, compact, snug home scenery, with everything 
in harmony, and stamped with one strong pecuhar character, Hol- 
land is a cabinet picture, in which nature and art join to produce 
one impression, one homogeneous effect. The Dutch cottage, 
with its glistening brick walls, white painted wood work and rails. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 39 

and its massive roof of thatch, with the stork clappering to her 
young on her old-established nest on the top of the gable, is 
admirably in place and keeping, just where it is — at the turn of 
the canal, shut in by a screen of willow trees, or tall reeds, from 
seeing, or being seen, beyond the sunny bight of the still calm 
water, in which its every tint and part is brightly repeated. Then 
the peculiar character of every article of the household furniture, 
which the Dutch-built house-mother is scouring on the green before 
the door so industriously ; the Dutch character impressed on every- 
thing Dutch, and intuitively recognized, like the Jewish or Gipsy 
countenance, wherever it is met with; the people, their dwellings, 
and all in or about them — their very movements in accordance 
with this style or character, and all bearing its impress strongly — 
make this Holland, to my eye, no dull, unimpressive land. There is 
soul in all you see ; the strongly marked character about every- 
thing Dutch pleases intellectually, as much as beauty of form itself 
What else is the charm so universally felt, requiring so little to be 
acquired, of the paintings of the Dutch school? The objects or 
scenes painted are neither graceful, nor beautiful, nor sublime ; 
but they are Dutch. They have a strongly marked mind and 
character impressed on them, and expressed by them ; and every 
accompaniment in the picture has the same, and harmonizes witii 
all around it. 

The Hollander has a decided taste for the romantic: great 
amateurs are the Mynheers of the rural. Every Dutchman above 
the necessity of working to-day for the bread of to-morrow has his 
garden-house (Buyteplaats) in the suburbs of his town (for the 
Dutch population lives very much in towns surrounded by wet 
ditches), and repairs to it on Saturday evening with his family, to 
ruralize until Monday over his pipe of tobacco. Dirk Hatterick, 
we are told, did so. It is the main extravagance of the Dutch 
middle-class man, and it is often an expensive one. This garden- 
house is a wooden box gayly painted, of eight or ten feet square ; 
its name, " My Delight," or " Rural Felicity," or " Sweet Soli- 
tude," stuck up in gilt tin letters on the front; and situated usually 
at the end of a narrow slip of ground inclosed on three sides with 
well-trimmed hedges and slimy ditches, and overhanging the canal, 
which forms the boundary of the garden plot on its fourth side. 
The slip of land is laid out in flower beds, all the flowers in one 
bed being generally of one kind and colour; and the brilliancy of 



40 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

these large masses of flowers — the white and green paint work 
and the gilding about the garden houses— and a row of those 
glittering fairy summer lodges, shining in the sun upon the side of 
the wide canal, and swimming in humid brilliancy in the midst of 
plots and parterres of splendid flowers, and with the accompani- 
ments of gayly dressed ladies at the windows — swiftly passing 
pleasure boats with bright burnished sides below, and a whole 
city population afloat, or on foot, enjoying themselves in their 
holyday clothes — form, in truth, a summer evening scene which 
one dwells upon with much delight. I pity the taste which can 
stop to inquire if all this human enjoyment be in good taste or 
bad taste, vulgar or refined. I stuff" my pipe-, hire a boatman to 
row me in his schuytje up the canal to a tea garden, and pass the 
evening as Dutchly and happily as my fellow-men. 

Holland is the land of the chivalry of the middle classes. Here 
they may say, in honest pride, to the hereditary lords and nobles 
of the earth in the other countries of Europe, See what we gro- 
cers, fish-curers, and ship-owners have done in days of yore, in 
this little country! But, alas! this glory is faded. In the deserted 
streets of Delft, and Leyden, and Haarlem, the grass is growing 
through the seams of the brick pavements ; the ragged petticoat 
flutters in the wind out of the drawing-room casements of a palace ; 
the echo of wooden shoes clattering through empty saloons, tells 
of past magnificence — of actual indigence. This has been a land 
of warlike deed, of high and independent feeling ; the home of 
patriots, of heroes, of scholars, of philosophers, of men of science, 
of artists, of the persecuted for religious or political opinions from 
every country, and of the generous spirits who patronized and 
protected them. Why is the Holland of our times no longer that 
old Holland of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ? Why 
are her streets silent, her canals green with undisturbed slime? 

The greatness of Holland was founded upon commercial pros- 
perity and capital, not upon productive industry.* Her capital 

* The heniug fishery of Holland has usually been represented as a branch 
of productive industry from which her wealth was drawn. Amsterdam is 
founded, we are told, on herring bones. Sir William Temple, and all political 
economists since his day, have indulged in gross exaggerations of the impor- 
tance and value of this branch of productive industry ; and our government 
has scarcely yet thrown off the mania of legislating, by bounties, boards, and 
regulations, for an unnatural extension of the British herring fishery — unna- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 41 

and industry were not employed in producing what ministers to 
human wants and gratifications ; but in transmitting what other 
countries produced, or manufactured, from one country to another. 
She was their broker. When their capitals, applied at first more 
beneficially to productive industry, had grown large enough to 
enter also into the business of circulation, as well as into that of 

tural because it is production beyond consumption, and is forced by bounties 
beyond the demand for the article. The following is the present slate of the 
Dutch herring fishery, viz. : In 1841 — 



Flardingen has fitted out 


79 busses. 


Delfshaven 


„ 


2 


— 


Zwartwaal 


- 


4 


— 


Mittelhaus 


- 


2 


— 


Schevening 


- 


1 


— 


Pirnis 


- 


1 


— 


Schiedam 


- 


1 


— 


Maassluys 


/• 


16 


— 


Enkhuyzen 


- 


4 


— 


Rip 


- 


6 


— 


Amsterdam 


- 


7 


— 




Total 


123 





Now suppose each buss to stow 400 barrels — and they are not vessels which 
can stow more, being small, and lumbered with their nets and provisions — 
and suppose each to make two trips, and to be a full ship each trip ; this outfit 
will produce, after all, only 98,400 barrels of herrings, or about double of the 
quantity usually cured in the county of Caithness. We have no reason to 
suppose that the real effective market for herrings was ever more extensive 
than it is now. By dint of bounties, no doubt, the Dutch may have sent out 
more busses, and cured more fish formerly; but if this increased production 
was forced beyond the demand and consumption, and the loss made good by 
the bounty to the producer, which is precisely the working of our bounty- 
system, in all things as well as in herrings, the country was no gainer by this 
surplus of production beyond a consumption at a reproductive price. Suppose, 
in the highest state of prosperity of the Dutch herring fishery, that they had 
the number of busses at sea which flourish before our eyes in the pamphlets 
innumerable on the Dutch herring fishery — say that they had 600 or 800, say 
1200 sail in any one year, and all full ships; this gives us but 960,000 barrels 
of herrings, worth about as many pounds sterling. This is probably one-third 
more of this kind of food than all the markets, including the llussian and West' 
Indian, ever consumed in one year; but throw it all to the credit of the I')utch 
herring fishery as clear gain, still it is no great item of national weallh and 
of production. It is at best a small thing magnified by bounty-fishers into 
a source of great national wealth. 
4 



42 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

production— into commerce, properly so called — the prosperity of 
Holland, founded upon commerce alone, unsupported by a basis 
of productive industry within herself, and among the mass of her 
own population, fell to the ground. This is the history of Holland. 
It speaks an important lesson to nations. 

The world has witnessed the decline of commercial greatness 
in Venice, in Genoa, in Florence, in the Hans Towns in Holland 
— of m.ilitary greatness in Rome, France, Sweden, Prussia; but 
has yet to learn whether productive greatness, that which is 
founded upon the manufacturing industry of a people in all the 
useful arts, be equally fleeting. It seems to rest upon principles 
in political philosophy of a more stable nature. It is more bound 
to soil and locality by natural circumstances. The useful metals, 
coals, fire-power, water-power, harbours, easy transport by sea 
and land, a climate favourable to out-door labour in winter and 
summer, are advantages peculiar to certain districts of the earth, 
and are not to be forced by the power of capital into new locali- 
ties. Markets may be established anywhere, but not manufac- 
tures. Human character, also, in the large, is farmed by human 
employment, and is only removable with it. The busy, active, 
industrious spirit of a population trained to quick work, and en- 
ergetic exertion of every power, in the competition of a manufac- 
turing country, is an unchangeable moral element in its national 
prosperity, fouVided upon productive industry. Look at an Eng- 
lishman at his work, and at one of these Dutchmen, or at any other 
European man. It is no exaggeration to say, that one million of 
our working men do more work in a twelvemonth, act more, 
think more, get through more, produce more, live more as active 
beings in this world, than any three millions in Europe, in the 
same space of time ; and in this sense I hold it to be no vulgar 
exaggeration that the Englishman is equal to three or to four of 
the men of any other country. Transplant these men to England ; 
and under the same impulse to exertion, and expeditious working 
habits, which quickens the English working class, they also would 
exceed their countrymen at home in productiveness. It is not in 
the human animal, but in the circumstances in which he is placed, 
that this most important element of national prosperity, this gene- 
ral habit of quick, energetic, persevering activity, resides ; and 
these circumstances, formed by nature, are not to be forced into 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 43 

any country, independently of natural agency, by mere dint of 
capital. 

How little the mass of the people of the Seven United Pro- 
vinces, the boors or peasants, or even the burgesses of the middle 
and lower classes, had been acted upon by the wealth and pros- 
perity of the commercial class in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, may be seen in their dwellings, furniture, clothing, and 
enjoyments and habits of civilized life. These are all of the 
make, material, and age prior to the rise of the opulence and 
power of Holland — of the age of Queen Elizabeth — and have 
remained, unchanged and unimproved, until that power and opu- 
lence have fallen again to the level from which they rose. A 
commercial class, aii aristocracy of capitalists, numerous perhaps 
as a moneyed body, but nothing as a national mass, were alone 
acted upon by this commercial prosperity ; and when trade gra- 
dually removed to other countries, the Dutch capitalist, without 
changing his domicil, easily transferred his capital to where the 
use of it was wanted and profitable. Holland remains a coiuitry 
full of capitalists and paupers; her wealth giving little employ- 
ment, comparatively, to her own population in productive in- 
dustry, and adding little to their prosperity, well-being, and habits 
of activity in producing and enjoying the objects of civilized life. 

The dilference of national mind, or character, in countries of 
which the wealth rests upon commerce, from that where it rests 
upon productive industry, is curiously brought out in the ditfer- 
eiice of their application to, and estimation of, the fine arts. In 
Italy, and in Holland, the social condition of great commercial 
wealth, with cotnparatively little employment given by it to the 
mass of the people, called into existence painters, sculptors, archi- 
tects; furnished artists, and encouragement for thcm — that is, 
demand and taste for their works. It was the main outlet for the 
activity of the public mind, and for the excess of capital beyond 
what could be profitably engaged in commerce. But a national 
mind formed, like that of the English people, in the school of 
productive industry, seeks the shadow at least of utility, even in 
its most extravagant gratifications. Horses, hounds, carriages, a 
seat in parliament, yachts, gardens, pet-farms, are tlie objects in 
which great wealth in England indulges, nuich more freciucntly 
than in grand palaces, fine jewels, valuable pairuings, delightful 
music. Of other tastes connected with the fine arts. The turn of 



44 ' NOTES OF A TRAVELLEB, 

the public mind is decidedly towards the useful arts ; for which 
all, high and low, have a taste differing not so much in kind as in 
the means and scale of its gratification. Capital can be so much 
more extensively employed in reproduction in the useful arts, 
where a whole population has a taste for and consumes their 
objects, that the excess to be invested in objects of the fine arts is 
surprisingly small in England, considering the vast amount and 
difl'asion of her v/ealth. What is not useful, at least in appear- 
ance, is but lightly esteemed as an expenditure of money, A 
duke and his shoemaker, or tailor, or tenant, have precisely the 
same tastes, lay out their excess of capital in objects of the same 
nature, in gratifications of the same kind : differing only in cost, 
not in principle. Look, in England, into the tradesman's parlour, 
kitchen, garden, stable, way of living, amusements, and modes 
of gratification — all are in the same taste as the riobleman's: the 
same principle of utility runs through all. The cultivated, or 
acquired tastes for the fine arts, for music, painting, sculptnrey 
architecture, are little, if at all, more developed among the higher 
or wealthier classes, than among the middle or lower classes. 
England at this day, with ten thousand times the V/^ealth, furnishes 
no such demand for and supply of objects of the fine arts as 
Florence, Genoa, or Holland did, in the days of their prosperity. 
Is this peculiar development of the national mind of the English 
people, this low appreciation and social influence of the fine arts 
compared to the useful among them, matter of just regret, as 
many amateurs consider it ^ or is it matter of just and enlightened 
exaltation, that our social condition has advanced so far beyond 
that of any civilized people v/ho have preceded us, that the 
tastes and gratifications which the few only of great wealth and 
great station in a community can cultivate, and enjoy, are as 
nothing in the mass of intellectual and bodily employment which 
the many give, by the demands upon intellect and industry, for 
their gratifications? 

What, after all, is the real value, in the social condition of man, 
of the fine arts? Are they not too highly estimated— raised by 
prejudices, inherited from aperiod of intellectual culture far be- 
hind our ov/n, into a false importance ? Do they contribute to 
the well-being, civilization, and intellectuality of mankind, as 
much as the cultivation of the useful arts? Do they call into 
activity higher mental powers, or more of the moral qualities of 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 45 

human nature, than the useful arts? Is the painter, the sculptor, 
the musician, the tlieatrical performer, generally a more cultivated, 
more intellectual, more moral member of society, a man approach- 
ing nearer to the highest end and perfection of human nature, than 
the engineer, the mechanician, the manufacturer? Is Rome, the 
seat of the fine arts, upon a higher, or so high a grade, in all that 
distinguishes a civihzed community, as Glasgow, INIancliester, or 
Birmingham — the seats of the useful arts? Are Scotland and 
the United States of America — without a good picture,^a good 
statue, or a good palace within tlieir bounds, and without more 
taste, feeling or knowledge in the fine arts, among the mass of the 
people, than among so many New Zealanders — very far below 
Italy, or Bavaria, with their fine arts, tastes, and artists, as moral 
and intellectual communities of civilized men? Is a picture, a 
statue, or a building, so high an effort of the human powers, 
intellectual and bodily, as a ship, a foundry, a cotton mill, whh 
all their complicated machineries and combinations ? We give, 
in reality, an undue importance to the fine arts — reckon them 
important, because they minister to the gratification, and are 
among the legitimate and proper enjoyments of kings and im- 
portant personages; but, like the military profession, or the servile 
employments about a royal court, their importance is derivative 
only — is founded on prejudice or fashion, not on sound philoso- 
phic grounds. If the exercise of mental and physical power over 
inert matter for the advantage of man — if moral and physical 
improvement in our social condition be the standards by which 
he importance of human action and production should, in reason, 
be measured, (and to what other standard can they be applied ?) 
the fine arts may descend from the pedestals on which the court 
literature of the age of Louis XIV had placed them in France, 
and in the little imitative German courts, and range themselves 
in the rear of the modern applications of science and genius to 
the useful arts. Rafaelle, Michael Angelo, Canova — immortal 
artists! sublime producers! what are ye in the sober estimation 
of reason ! The Arkwrighfs, the Watts, the Davys, the thousands 
of scientific inventors and producers in the usehil arts, in our ago, 
must rank before you, as wielders of great intellectual powers lor 
great social good. The exponent of the civilization and intel- 
lectual and social progress of man, is not a statue, but a steam 
engine. The lisping amateur, hopping about the saloons of the 



46 NOTES OF A TRAVELLEB. 

great, ma}'' prattle of taste, and refined feeling in music, scolptnre;^ 
painting, as humanizing influences in society, as effective means 
and distinguishing proofs of the diffusion of civilization among 
mankind ; but the plain, undeniable, knock-me-down truth is, 
that the Glasgow manufacturer., whose printed cotton handker- 
chiefs the traveller Landers found adorning the woolly heads of 
negresses far in the interior of Africa, who had never seen a white 
human facCy has done more for civilization, has extended humari- 
izing influences more widely, than all the painters, sculptors, 
architects, and musicians of our age put together. Monstrous 
Vandalism, but true. 

The Dutch are mostly caged in half-empty large towns, or vil- 
lages. To live a town life in the country, or a country life in the 
town, is the most insipid and unsatisfactory of all ways of passing 
life. Except in pictures, and in the novelty and character of their 
home-scenery, which is often a Dutch picture in real, Holland 
and its inhabitants are, in fact, not attractive. The climate is 
damp, raw, and cold for eight months ; hot and unwholesome, 
for four. The Dutch people, eminently charitable and benevolent 
as a public, their country full of beneficent institutions admirably 
conducted and munificently supported, are as individuals some- 
what rough, hard, and, although it be uncharitable to say so, 
uncharitable and unfeeling. We have, too, at home, our excel- 
lent benevolent men, who will subscribe their sovereign, or their 
twenty, to an hospital, house of refuge, or missionary or charita- 
ble society for the relief or instruction of the poor ; but, on prin- 
ciple, withold their penny from the shivering female on their 
door-steps, imploring alms for the pale, sickly infant in her arms. 
They are right on principle and consideration, quite right; but 
one is not particularly in love with such quite-right people. The 
instinct of benevolence in the heart is worth a whole theory of 
such political economy in the head. Here, in Holland, the priva- 
tions and misery of the poor are necessarily very severe, the 
labouring class having very little agricultural work to turn to, as 
the land is mostly under old grass for dairy husbandry; and eveu 
the enclosures, being wet ditches, not hedges or walls, require few 
annual repairs; no manufacturing employment of any conse- 
quence, and, in fact, no work, except the transport of goods from 
the seaports to the interior. Fuel, too, that greatest item, next la 
food, in a poor man's comfort, is scarce and dear, being priaci- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 47 

pally of peat-mud scooped out of the bogs in the interior of the 
country, and baked in the sun like bricks. The centre of the 
province of Holland is excavated like a great lagoon, by the ex- 
traction of peat for ages. A small earthen dish of live embers 
enclosed in a perforated wooden box,is carried about by the women 
of the poor, and even of the middle class ; and when they sit 
down to work, is put under their petticoats, and is the principal 
firing in the winter life of the poor female. The effect of the 
scarcity of fuel, or of the economy of it, in the Dutch household, 
is visible in the usual costume of the working and middle classes. 
The proverbial multiplicity of the Dutchman's integuments of his 
nether man, and the tier above tier of petticoat which makes his 
bulky frow a first-rate under sail, are effects of the dearness of 
fuel in a raw, cold, damp clime. 

In our manufacturing t%\vns, the poor, however badly off, have 
more advantages in fuel, lodging, and occasional work produced 
by manufacturing establishments, than in towns of greater wealth, 
arising from commerce, or from the fixed incomes of capitalists, 
landholders, and public functionaries. Edinburgh, for instance, 
is not a seat of manufactures. We see a wealthy or well-off up- 
per class in it; a thriving, well-to-do middle class, living by their 
expenditure; and the class below, living by the family work and 
handicrafts required by the other two, not very ill-off either ; but 
dive to the bottom of society, even in Edinburgh, where fuel and 
fish are cheap and land work and building work not scarce, but, 
on the contrary, taking off much common labour at all seasons, 
and you find the surplus of the labouring class, beyond what the 
other two classes regularly employ, in extreme distress from the 
want of manufactures on a great scale circulating employment 
around them. Now Holland is just one such great city spread 
over a small country ; and not a manufacturing city, but such a 
city of capitalists, and of middle-class people living by their ex- 
penditure, affording no labour to the lowest class— nothing but 
city work, as tradesmen, family servants, and porters, seamen, or 
bargemen. The two upper classes, and those they employ of the 
lower class, may be well enough off; but such emj)loyment is 
stationary, has no principle of an increase in it keeping pace, in 
some degree, with the growth of population ; and the surplus, 
who cannot find work in such a social body, is more wretched 
than in anv other land. 



48 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

After the peace of 1816, Holland was among the first countries 
in Europe that was obliged to grapple with a pauperism which 
threatened to subvert all social arrangements. She established 
poor colonies on some of the barren, sandy tracts of back coun- 
try, above and behind the rich alluvial delta of the Rhine and 
Scheldt. In 1821, when Holland and Belgium, united in one 
monarchy, were recovering from the unsettled idle state in which 
countries exposed to the agitations and vicissitudes of war are 
kept — and which is the greatest evil of war — the total population 
of the two was 5,715,347; and of these 753,218 persons, or 1 
person nearly in ev^ery 7i of the population, was supported by 
public charity. The proportion of this pauperism which belonged 
to Holland and Belgium, severally, is not mentioned ; but from 
the very different social state of the two populations— that of 
Holland altogether commercial and agricultural, that of Belgium 
manufacturing as well as agricultural, and scarcely at all com- 
mercial — it would have been interesting to have seen distinctly 
the effects on pauperism of the two distinct elements, commercial 
activity and manufacturing industry. The total pauperism ap- 
pears to have exceeded, in 1821, the highest proportion of the 
population of England that was ever supported, wholly or in 
part, by poor rate. It is generally understood that 1 in 8 of the 
population was the greatest proportion in England, when poor- 
rates v/ere under no regulation, that ever received parochial re- 
lief The rich alluvial delta which the Scheldt, the Rhine, with 
its branches the Maese, the Waal, the Yssel, and many smaller 
waters, form around the great inlets, of the sea^ the Biesbos, the 
Zuyder Zee, and the Dollert, are bounded on the land side by a 
frame of barren sandy ground of very little elevation above the 
rich land — the richest soil, perhaps, to be found north of the Alps 
— which it adjoins, but of very different fertility. A stunted 
heath growing from a thin covering of peat earth which hides 
only in patches the rough sand and gravel, is the principal natural 
vegetation. In some spots the pine exists rather than flourishes, 
and shallow pools are found in the hollows which have any soil 
in the bottom sufficiently tenacious to retain the rain-water. Un- 
promising as this land may appear for agricultural purposes, there 
is good reason for supposing that some of the best tracts of Flan- 
ders, and which now are the most fertile in the north of Europe, 
have originally been of the same quality. About Breda, and in 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 49 

many other districts, spots of the original land untouched as yet 
by cultivation, remain visible as an encouragement to industry. 
But it is not an individual, nor a generation that can reclaim a 
barren waste with advantage. Yet it may be done by the labour 
of many successive generations applied, without intermission, to 
the same spot. Such improvement carries no profit with it. 
Capital is thrown away, and labour is not repaid for many gene- 
rations, unless a scanty subsistence from the soil be a rcpaynient 
for the labour of cultivating it. Yet if the land be the labourer's 
own, he will put up with that recompense. Each succeeding 
generation is better off, by the gradual improvement of the soil 
from continued cultivation. The foot of man itself leaves fertility 
behind it ; and the poorest inhabited spot is always superior to 
the waste around it, and always in proportion to the length of 
time it has been used. The basis of this improvement of the 
uncultivated land of a country is undoubtedly population settled 
as proprietors, and working on small garden-like portions, from 
generation to generation. Large operations with outlay of capital, 
and hired labour, and the system of large farming, rarely succeed 
in reclaiming land, and still more rarely afford a real profit, even 
when attempted on single fields adjoining a cultivated large farm. 
The first operation in reclaiming land from a state of nature is 
certainly to plant it with men. 

The Dutch began, in 1818, to plant poor colonies in the barren 
tract behind the Zuyder Zee. A society of subscribers to a fund 
for the diminution of pauperism, aided by assistance from govern- 
ment, purchased an estate near Steenwyk, a small town in that 
tract of country, and commenced a poor colony, called Frederics- 
oort, with fifty-two families sent from different parishes which 
had subscribed to the fund. The whole cost 56,000 florins, or 
about 4650/. sterling, and its extent was about 1200 acres, of 
which about 200 had been cultivated, or at least laid into the 
shape of fields. The poor quality of the land may be imagined 
from its price. Each family, consisting on an average of six per- 
sons of all ages, and settled on an allotment of seven acres, was 
found to cost in outfit, including the expense of their house, furni- 
ture, food, and seed for one year, clothing, flax, and wool for their 
spinning, land for their cultivating, and two cows, about 1700 
florins, or 141/. 10*. sterling ; and in 16 years the colonist was 
expected to repay this advance by the surplus production of his 



50 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

labour, besides maintaining his faraily. A strict system of co-op- 
erative and coercive labour, under discipline, as in a penal work- 
house, was established. The colonist worked by the piece, under 
inspection of overseers, was paid by a ticket, according to fixed 
rates for the different kinds of work, and the ticket was good for 
rations of food, or stores, at the shop or magazine of the society, 
deUvered at fixed and moderate prices. The allotment of land 
was to become ultimately the colonist's own property, when he 
had cleared the 1700 florins of advance; and, by good conduct 
and industry, he could obtain various indulgences and encourage- 
ments during the 16 years which were required to clear that sum 
according to the calculations of the society. The founder of this 
establishment was a Dutch oflicer. General Van der Bosh, who 
had seen in the East Indies, among the Chinese settlers in Java, 
the great agricultural results from the co-operative labour of small 
proprietors of land. With the people he had to deal — the pau- 
pers of town populations, with vice and idleness, as well as want 
and misery, in their social composition— he had to establish the 
arrangements and discipline, both as to rewards and punishments, 
of a penal colony. Constant employment under overseers was 
the fundamental law. The free proprietorship of the land at the 
end of 16 years was the ultimate reward ; and medals for good 
conduct, and indulgences in the liberty of going about, were 
minor intermediate rewards. The punishments were confine- 
ment and hard labour in a small town called Omme Schantz. 
The parishes which subscribed to the funds of the society 5100 
guilders, or 425/., had the privilege of sending three families or 
housekeepings, two of them consisting of six grown persons each, 
and the third of six orphans, or foundlings, not under six years of 
age, and a married couple with them, to manage for the children. 
For the maintenance of each child, 160 guilders, or 5/., was to be 
paid yearly. It appears that, in 1826, the poor colony at Wortel, 
near Antwerp, established on the same plan, contained 125 farms, 
and the managers of it had contracted to take 1000 paupers for 
13 years, at 35 guilders, or 585. 4d. sterling, per head yearly. In 
all, 20,000 persons were reckoned in 1826 in these poor colonies 
of Frederics-oort and Wortel. 

The separation of Holland and Belgium was of course unfa- 
vourable to the progress of this great experiment on pauperism. 
I found on visiting the pauper colony of Wortel, in 1841, that 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 51 

not one colonist had prospered so far as to repay the advance, 
according to the prospectus given out at its establishment in 1 S22 : 
and that of 125 farms in cultivation in 1823, and 1000 paupers 
contracted for, only 21 families are now remaining. It may be 
thought that this Belgian division of the great experiment on 
pauperism is scarcely to be taken as a fair example of its feasi- 
bility, because it has not received from the present Belgian govern- 
ment the same fostering aid and encouragement as it did, and that 
of Frederics-oort still does, from the former Dutch government, 
the scheme having been specially favoured and cherished by the 
late or ex-king of Holland. 

But his schemes were not always the most judicious. This 
establishment at Wortel had the advantage of four years' expe- 
rience of the system as carried on at Frederics-oort, which was 
established in ISIS; it had the advantage of being established 
by Captain Van der Bosh, the son of the original proposer ; it 
had the advantage, if any, of all the government aid from 1822 
till the separation of Belgium and Holland ; and it has since had 
the real and, for the political economist, much greater advantage 
of having been left by government to its own resources, to the 
efficacy of its own principles. It has proved a failure : the colo- 
nists who remain are, however, very far above pauperism. Their 
crops, houses, clothing, indicate very considerable prosperity ; but 
a good house which cost forty pounds sterling, seven acres of land, 
very barren to be sure, being mere sandy heath, but still capable of 
improvement, and requiring no draining or clearing of rocks, roots, 
trees, or obstructions, arc data upon which a pauper may well 
become rich for his station, if work also be found him for four 
days in the week, and paid for in rations of food, or in stores, and 
the other two days allowed him for working upon his own rent- 
free land. The question is, whether the work found for him by 
the public pays its cost, the wages paid for it either in rations of 
food, or in stores. The work consists in planting or cutting down 
trees; in fencing and preparing land for cultivation ; in cultivat- 
ing the land which, in part at least, is to furnish the paupers them- 
selves with rations for their own subsistence ; and also, as in-door 
employment, in spinning, weaving, and manufacturing all that is 
used, or issued in the colony. Poor-rate and workhouse labour, 
applied in this way, is undoubtedly a better general system than 
if they arc applied to the supply of the ordinary markets of a 



52 NOTES OF A THAVELLER. 

country, with the same articles which give employment to the 
classes who are but just one step above pauperism. If every work- 
house or poor-house in the kingdom maintained itself by the value 
and sale of the work of its inmates, in shoemaking, weaving, rope- 
making, and such ordinary crafts as are carried on in work-houses, 
the system would just drive so much unaided, independent in- 
dustry, into the poor-house : for the single unaided tradesman, 
with house-rent, fuel, light, cost of raw materials of his product, 
and risk of its sale, all against him, could not stand against the 
competition of such assisted pauper- work. It is a wise principle, 
therefore, and in so far this pauper colony has been well con- 
sidered, to apply pauper or penal labour only to the production 
of what the pauper or convict establishment consumes within 
itself. In the same barren tract of sandy heath in which the 
pauper colony of Wortel is established, there is a penal colony of 
about 600 convicts. They are worked under overseers, like all 
convict gangs,''but in farm work, and producing their own neces- 
saries, and they thus raise some portion, at least, of their own 
food and clothing. It does not appear that escape is frequent ; 
and classification by separate working gangs, in this out-door 
work of which all are capable, may be obtained without seclu- 
sion. 

The crops of rye, clover, flax, potatoes, buckwheat, raised on 
this barren land, both in the penal and in the pauper colony at 
Wortel, are very fine, and when one sees the miserable, sandy, 
sterile, heath-land, out of which these fertile spots have been 
created, foot by foot, as it were, by the most minute labour, and 
the most careful manuring, the ultimate failure with us of almost 
every attempt to bring such barren wastes into fertility by grand 
applications of labour and capital to a large area at once, is easily 
accounted for. The repetition of work on the same spot, the 
exposure of it by repeated turnings to the influence of the atmo- 
sphere, the admixture of manure almost by hand, with every 
particle of the raw, barren soil, are operations which even capital 
cannot command, and which hired work upon the large scale 
cannot profitably accomplish. It is the time only, and that time 
not valued, of the small proprietor, which can fertilize, bit by bit, 
such land. It is, in one view, certainly not a profitable application 
of time and labour. They are not repaid in money or other 
\,''alue within any moderate period. In another view, it is profit- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 53 

able; the man who would be a pauper, feeds himself by his time 
and labour, and adds a little, however little, to the perpetual pro- 
ductiveness of his little farm. 

This land of flowers and of frogs is marvellously ill-adapted for 
the bed of royalty. Kingly government, a court, and nobility, are 
not in harmony with the character, habits, tastes, manners, ways 
of thinking and living, and established social economy of this 
commercial, counting-house population, who for ages have been 
strangers to conventional rank and influence, either hereditary, 
military, or literary, or to any other social distinction than what a 
man acquires for himself on 'change. Such property and in- 
fluence are too variable in society to be a secure basis for kingly 
power. They owe nothing to it. Competition, disunion, and 
change, enter also more into them than into the element of landed 
property, whi.ch seems to be the only stable basis for monarchical 
government. Men who have acquired their own personal pro- 
perty and social weight, submit unwillingly to irresponsible royal 
management ; and a public bred, individually, to guide their own 
affairs, will not sit passive, and see them guided by a king and 
cabinet. They scrutinize too rigidly, perhaps, the royal doings, 
and have too little respect for royal dignity. The ex-king of 
Holland landed at Schevening, in 1813, with his portmanteau, and 
a bunch of orange ribbons at his breast. His majesty retired from 
business in 1841, the richest individual in Europe, worth, it is said, 
above twenty millions of pounds sterling. The recognition by 
law of 14th of May, 1814, of all the old and forgotten state debts 
or obligations of Holland, was the origin of this enormous wealth. 
These old state paper debts were considered to be as worthless as 
the assignats of the French Republic, and, until their acknowledg- 
ment in 1814, were sold for a small value. By the stock-jobbing 
with the syndicats for paying off these state obligations, from 
1822 — 1830, and by the establishment of the Bank of Brussels, of 
which his majesty was a principal stockholder, immense sums 
were gained. Besides, the exclusive management of the revenues 
of the East India colonies without any obligation to render ac- 
counts of it, was, by a questionable interpretation of the 60tli 
article of the Ground Law of the kingdom of the Netherlands, 
held to belong to, and was exercised by the sovereign. In a 
trading country like Ilollaifd, and an exhausted country, with a 
population of only 2,700,000 people, and a debt of 1121) millions 



54 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

of guilders bearing interest, and of 316 millions of old debt 
gradually to be redeemed, in short, with a taxation which cannot 
be pushed above 52i millions and a yearly expenditm-e of 72,- 
183,500 guilders to provide for; the accumulation of wealth of 
such enormous amount by the head of the state, as a private man, 
is looked upon with no very dutiful eye. It cannot be concealed, 
that the monarchical principle lias been seriously injured in Hol- 
land, Sweden, and France, by the money-making, stock-jobbing 
propensities of the sovereigns. A king, in these censorious times, 
cannot turn an honest penny in trade, or stock-jobbing, like 
another man, without losing that isolation from all private inte- 
rests and feelings which is the essential in the royal position, and 
the main support of the monarchical principle in the human mind. 
In many branches of trade " one man's gain is another man's 
loss," according to the apprehension of the public ; and where 
this relation steps in between king and people — the king the 
gainer, the people the loser — the prestige of loyalty to the mil- 
lionaire-monarch is gone. He is but a Rothschild on the throne. 
In Holland, where material interests have long been predominant, 
and are well understood, the successful application of their ex- 
king to his private material interests has not added to the real 
power or stability of the throne. The incompatibility of the 
state of society, public opinion, and property, with kingly power, 
has shown itself in several recent transactions. The Dutch people 
will not tolerate irresponsible ministers in the management of 
public affairs. They carry their point in spite of the king. They 
will not tolerate in their sovereign, what in Prussia, and in all the 
German states in which monarchy is supported by a basis of 
aristocracy and landed property, is considered a laudable privilege 
of royalty — that, for royal convenience, morality, and the ordinary 
religious obligations and forms of marriage, should be set aside, 
and a left-handed, morganatic, or mock marriage should give a 
sanction to what would not be sanctioned by public opinion, as 
right and moral in persons of private station. The Dutch choose 
that their kings shall be subject, like other men, to the ordinary 
rules of morality, religion and prudence. They carry their point. 
Public opinion, ever on the side of morality when fairly brought 
out by the voice of a whole people, beats down with contempt, 
in such a community, the courtly attempts to slur over vvhat is 
morally wrong; and their king, anxious to marry a private per- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 55 

son, resigns before its voice ; for public opinion is here a state 
power. The natural tendency of a society so constituted as this, 
and with such moral power, is to arrive at the plain conclusion, 
and the determination, too, that their king ought to be but the 
president, and executive head, of their commonwealth. 

Tlie total separation of Holland and Belgium was a false step for 
the welfare of both. They should have divorced each other, the 
two little countries, from bed and board only. The one country 
is necessary to the other, and neither has the means to support a 
distinct housekeeping. Holland has capital, commerce, and mag- 
nificent colonies, but has nothing of her own manufacturing to 
send to her colonies, no productions of her own industry to ex- 
change with their industry, no commerce in any products of her 
own. Belgium has manufacturing industry, and the raw mate- 
rials on which it works, coal-fields, iron-works, and many pro- 
ductive capabilities ; but has no colonies, no outlets, no markets, 
no ships, no commerce. With the Prussian manufacturing pro- 
vinces on the land side, England on the sea-side, and no shipping 
or sea ports, but two, Antwerp and Ostend, and no free river 
trade even to the consumers on the continent behind her, Belgium 
is like the rich man in the fable, shut up with his treasures in his 
own secret closet, and starving to death in the midst of his gold, 
because he cannot unlock the door. These two little states will 
come together again before a hundred years go over their heads 
— not as one monarchy, for both want the foundation in their 
social structure for monarchical government to stand upon — but 
as two independent states federally united under one general 
goverimient, like the United States of America, or the Swiss 
cantons. 

The principle of federalism has not been sufiiciently examined 
by political philosphers. Theoretically, it is better adapted to the 
wants of man in society than the principle of great monarchical 
dominions under a sole central government, wheresoever the phy- 
sical, or moral interests of the governed are discordant, wliercso- 
ever the rights and advantages of one mass of population, their 
prosperity, industry, well-being, property, natural benefits of soil, 
situation, and climate, their manners, language, religion, nation- 
ality in spirit or prejudice, are set aside, and sacrificed to those of 
another mass. In almost all extensive monar^'.hies this must be 
the case, from the centralization inseparable from that species of 



56 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

general government. Federalism seems a more natural and just 
principle of general government, theoretically considered, than this 
forced centralization. No rights or advantages of any of the parts 
are sacrificed in federalism, for nothing is centralized but what is 
iiecessarjT^ for the external defence, safety, and welfare of all the 
parts. The peculiar internal welfare of each part, according to its 
own peculiar internal circumstances, physical and moral, according 
to its own political idiosyncrasy, is in its own keeping, in its own 
internal legislative and administrative powers. As civilization, 
peace, and industry acquire an influence in the aff'airs of mankind, 
which the individual ambition of a sovereign, or the ignorance 
and evil passions of a government will not be allowed to shake, 
the superiority of small independent states federally united, each 
extending over such territory, or masses of society only, as can 
be governed together, without the sacrifice of one part to another, 
and each interested in the general civiUzation, peace and industry, 
will probably be acknowledged by all civilized populations. Junc- 
tions morally or physically discordant, as that of Belgium and 
Holland, Austria and Lombardy, districts and populations on the 
Vistula and Niemen, with districts and populations onUhe Rhine 
and Moselle, are political arrangements which lack any principle 
of permanency founded upon their benefits to the governed. Na- 
ture forbids, by the unalterable diflerences of soil, climate, situation, 
and natural advantages of country, or by the equally unalterable 
moral diff'erences between people and people, that one government 
can equally serve all— be equally suited to promote the utmost good 
of all. Federalism involves a principle more akin to natural, free, 
and beneficial legislation, and to the improvement of the social con- 
dition of man, than governments in single extensive states, holding 
legislative and executive powers over distant and distinct countries 
and populations, whether such governments be constitutional or 
despotic. It is much more likely to be the future progress of 
society, that Europe in the course of time, civilization, and the 
increasing influence of public opinion on all public affairs, will 
resolve itself into one great federal union of many states, of extent 
suitable to their moral and physical peculiarities, like the union of 
the American states, than that those American states will, in the 
course of time and civilization, fall back into separate, uncon- 
nected, and hostile monarchies and aristocracies, which some mo- 
dern travellers in America assure us is their inevitable doom. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 57 

With all respect for their gifts of prophecy, the tendency of human 
afiairs is not to retrograde towards the old, but to advance towards 
the new, towards a higher physical, moral, and religious condi- 
tion; towards forms of government in which the interests of the 
people shall be directed by the people, and for the people. Moral 
and intellectual power is leavening the whole mass, and not merely 
the upper crust of European society. The political balance of 
power among the European governments, if the idea could be 
carried out to its utmost completeness and permanency, is in 
reality a homage to the principle of federalism, an imperfect ap- 
proximation to a federal union of the European powers — imper- 
fect, because the interests of kingdoms territorially or dynastically 
considered as family estates, not the distinct physical and moral 
interests of the different masses of the European population, are 
attempted to be federalized. Yet this imperfect principle of fed- 
eralism is eminently successful in the political federation of the 
Germanic states. This federation acts with dignity and power. 
In Switzerland, and in America, the constitution of the central 
federated power may be imperfect, may be too strong, or not 
strong enough; or even the stale of society may not be ripe for 
the federal constitution adopted, and may, as yet, want a class 
removed by education and fortune from the temptation of turning 
public affairs to their private pecuniary advantage ; but still the 
principle of federalism, theoretically considered, appears more rea- 
sonable and suitable to the well-being of society than the mon- 
archical, and appears to be that towards which civilized and 
educated society is naturally tending in its course. The German 
custom-house union, or commercial league, is a remarkable indi- 
cation of the irresistible tendency of social economy in modern 
times towards the principle of federalism. Kings and governments 
are often but the blind agents in these vast spontaneous movements 
of society. In this great measure of federalizing the German popu- 
lations for the regulation and advancement of their industrial and 
commercial interests, is involved a principle which must neces- 
sarily extend to the constitutional and political rights and interests 
of these communities ; and one altogether incompatible with the 
principle and system of the very governments and kings who at 
present lead this movement of the social body in Germany. 

The efficiency of the federal principle in the political condition 
of states has been impressively brought out in modern history, in 
5 



58 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

the two little countries at the opposite extremities of the Rhine — 
in Holland and in Switzerland. In both countries, national en- 
ergy and moral strength" of character have been more vigorously 
displayed, even in the most recent times, than in any of the small 
neighbouring monarchies. It would be a ridiculous contrast to 
compare the histories of the passive Danish, Hanoverian, Bava- 
rian, or Wurtemburg populations with those of the Dutch or 
Swiss nations. The obstinate struggle of the Dutch to retain 
possession of Belgium was a lingering spark of their old federal 
patriotism and strength of character, still glowing beneath a royal 
government too recent in a country of such republican habits and 
spirit as Holland, to kindle, for its own sake, a spark of loyalty. 
If Holland had been restored, on the expulsion of the French in 
1814, to her ancient federal constitution, with a stadtholder instead 
of a king, and with Belgium as one of the states of the confede- 
ration, the cause of the rupture — the interference with the local 
advantages or prejudices of the one portion of the new-baked 
kingdom, for the sake of the other— the centralization-attempt of 
the late King of Holland for giving effect to the monarchical prin- 
ciple of extending one consolidated power, one language, law, 
and religion over all, would never have existed. Belgium, as one 
of the united or federal states, would have retained her own in- 
ternal laws, language, regulations, and social arrangements, as 
independently as Holland, and yet have been as effective a mem- 
ber of one state in the European family as the canton of Bern is 
in the Swiss confederation, or as the province of Holland, or that 
of Zealand, was in that of the Seven United Provinces, or as the 
state of New York is in the American. If the balance of power 
in Europe required, in 1815, one political state or power of some 
weight, and of independent existence, on this side of the great 
monarchies, France and Prussia, and in possession of the great 
battle-field on which almost all European warfare has ultimately 
been decided, that necessity or policy exists now in full strength. 
The separation of the two countries is a breach of the settlement 
of Europe, which can only be remedied by uniting them in that 
way in which alone they will submit to be united, viz., as one 
federal state in the European system, like the Swiss. As two in- 
dependent monarchies, it is evident that neither has the means to 
maintain herself in a neutral state, and on the first warlike move- 
ment in Europe, France will, and for her own self-defence must 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 59 

of necessity re-occupy Belgium, as being a country too weak to 
cover France by a showof neutrality which the power of Belgium 
alone cannot maintain. Without any great convulsion in Europe 
by war, it is even possible that, by the extension of the new ele- 
ment in European policy — the principle of the German commercial 
league — Belgium will become, dc facto, united to France, united by 
all its material interests, and Holland to Prussia, or to the German 
commercial league, if that assume, as it is fast doing, a distinct 
political existence as a federated power in Europe. Holland will 
have the best of the bargain in this new shape of aflairs to which 
the political state of Europe is tending. She will hold the keys 
of the outlet and inlet of all the material interests of Germany, 
and, possessing the colonies, ports, and shipping through which 
these must work, will in reality be the head of the new European 
power of 26 millions of people federated by the commercial league. 
Prussia will be but a branch of this new power. Belgium, taking 
the opposite side, viz., the French commercial alliance, will in 
reality be the department of the Scheldt governed by a king in- 
stead of a prefect. The jealousy of republican institutions which, 
in 1815, prevented the restoration of the federal constitution of 
Holland under a stadtholder, and forced monarchy upon countries 
devoid of the principles, in their social economy and habits, on 
which monarchical government rests, is beginning now to reap 
the fruits it sowed. 

The Swiss were more fortunate than the Dutch on the remodel- 
ling of Ein-ope in 1815, and retained the principle of federalism 
in the general government of their two-and-twenty distinct, and. 
in language, religion, laws, and constitutions for internal govern- 
ment, widely different states. They act well together as a fede- 
rated European power. The general executive government of 
these little Swiss states made a dignified and determined stand 
against the demonstrations and menaces of France, on the ques- 
tion of the expulsion of Prince Louis Buonaparte from Switzer- 
land. It was for the principle of their integrity and honour, and 
of the protection given by all to the citizen of any one of their 
states, — and Monsieur Buonaparte had unluckily acquired citizen- 
ship in the state of Bern — that the Swiss people were ready to a 
man to encounter the chances of war with the French monarch, 
and were actually under arms, and suffering the evils of war in 
their commercial industry, interests, and communications. Would 



60 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

any of the neighbouring monarchical states, Wurtembiirg, Baden, 
Hesse, have assumed so dignified and determined a position as 
the Swiss cantons did on this occasion, upon a question of prin- 
ciple, and of the protection due to a citizen ? Prince Louis Buo- 
naparte was nothing in the movement ; was but the fly on the 
chariot wheel fancying he was kicking up all the dust around 
him. When the prince became sensible — and it was not too soon 
— that he was personally not thought of in tlie question by the 
Swiss people, and found himself in the mortifying position of 
being the cause, without, in the slightest degree, being the object 
of the impending rupture, he took himself off, and the question 
was at once at an end. This trifling affair, however, may give 
the political philosopher something to reflect on. This federal 
bundle of apparently discordant materials, when a question arose 
to be met with national spirit and united vigour, showed itself 
thoroughly nationalized, and prepared to act : and the readiness 
of federated Switzerland to hazard all in defence of a just prin- 
ciple, and of monarchical France to break through all interna- 
tional principle, shows that federalism is not always weak, nor 
always wrong. 



CHAPTER ir. 

FRANCE— FACE OF THE COUNTRY.— OF ENGLAND— OLD SUBDIVISION OF 
LAND^ IN ENGLAND.— GREAT SOCIAL EXPERIMENT IN FRANCE— ABO- 
LITION OF PRIMOGENITURE.— OPINIONS OF ARTHUR YOUNG— MR. BIR- 
BECK— EDINBURGH REVIEWERS— DR. CHALMERS REVIEWED.— EF- 
FECTS OF THE DIVISION OF LAND IN FRANCE EXAMINED.— FRENCH 
CHARACTER— MORALS— HONESTY— DECIMAL DIVISION OF WEIGHTS 
AND MEASURES, WHY NOT POPULAR. 

The traveller should either know a great deal about the country 
he is going to visit, or nothing at all ; and perhaps his readers 
would find themselves better off with his ignorance than his 
knowledge. . He is very apt to shut one eye, and look with the 
other through a coloured glass which he has been at great pains to 
stain with the opinions and prejudices of other people, and which 
gives its own hue to everything he sees through it. In politics, 
political economy, and the fine arts, most people can only see 
through their neighbours' spectacles. In France it is particularly 
difficult to exert the rare faculty of seeing through one's own eyes. 
France is a moral volcano which has shaken to the ground ancient 
social structures, laws, governments, and the very ideas, principles, 
or prejudices which supported them. Who of this generation can 
approach the crater of such mighty movements, and conscien- 
tiously say that he is able to examine them calmly, philosophically, 
without preconceived theories or speculations upon their causes- 
or tendencies? Every reflecting traveller admits that the great 
elements of change in the social condition of Europe which were 
thrown out by the French revolution are only now beginning to 
work powerfully ; that the most important and permanent of its 
results have been moral, not political; that in reality the French 
revolution is but in its commencement, as a great social movement. 
So far all observers of the times we live in travel together: but 
here they diverge. Each observes the agencies brought info ope- 
ration upon the mass of the European people by the French 
revolution, through the distorting medium of the opinions and 
prejudices of his own country, class, or social position as an indi- 



62 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

vidual, and reasons and prophesies only upon the shapes and 
colours which he sees through this false medium. Am I in a 
condition to see with clearer eyes? I doubt it. I do not profess it. 

The traveller in France finds much to observe, but little to de- 
scribe. The landscape is a wearisome expanse of tillage land 
unvaried by hill and dale, stream and lake, rock and woodland. 
The towns and villages are squatting in the plains, like stranger 
beggar-women tired of wandering in an unknown land. No 
suburbs of connected rows of houses and gardens, and of lanes 
dotted with buildings, trees, and brick walls, stretch, as in England, 
like feelers into the country, fastening the towns to it by so many 
lines, that the traveller is in doubt where country ends and town 
begins. Here, the towns and villages are distinct, round, inhabited 
patches upon the face of the land, just as they are represented 
upon a map : and the flat, monotonous surface of the map is no 
uncharacteristic sketch of the appearance of the country. La 
belle France, in truth, is a Calmuc beauty ; her flat pancake of a 
face destitute of feature, of projection or dimple, and not even 
tattooed with lines and cross lines of hedges, walls, and ditches. 
This wide, unhedged expanse of corn land on either hand, with 
out divisions, or enclosures, or pasture fields, or old trees, single or 
in groups, is supremely tiresome. The traveller at once admits 
that France has a natural claim to the word which all other 
countries have borrowed from her — ennui. 

The green network of hedges spread over the face of England, 
that peculiar charm of English land, must have been formed at 
some very peculiar period in the history of the English people. It 
must have been the work of a nation of small proprietors long 
employed upon it. We view it as an embellishment only, and 
frequently as an incumbrance, rather than a convenience in hus- 
bandry ; but it is a memorial of an extinct social condition different 
from the present, which has prevailed in some former and distant 
age in England. This subdivision of the land into small portions 
by permanent hedges and mounds of earth, is almost pecuhar to 
England. In Scotland, in France, in Germany, in all European 
countries in which the feudal system gave the original law and 
tenure of land, no small properties fenced all round from each 
other have existed of old, unless, it may be, in a few small locali- 
ties. In Etigland, the history of society and property is written 
upon the face of the country. This immense work, unexampled 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER, 63 

in extent in any other country, must liave been executed in the 
six hundred years between the final departure of the Romans 
and the Norman conquest. The open, unenclosed surface of 
those districts of France which belonged to the earUer kings of 
our Norman line, shows that in the state of the possession of 
landed property in those provinces in their time, no subdivisions 
by numerous small permanent enclosures had ever been required 
or formed. The small enclosures in England must have been 
made in a different state of society, before the Norman conquest, 
yet probably after the Romans left the country. No country 
occupied by the Romans shows any such traces of subdivision 
among a small proprietary. The Roman occupation of Britain 
was altogether military ; and such a body of small proprietary 
would have been adverse in a civil view, and their separate strong 
enclosures upon the face of the country obstructive, in a military 
view, to the Roman power. The Saxons and Danes — one people 
in the principles of their laws, institutions, and languages, although 
in different states of civilization — must have woven this immense 
veil over the face of the land during the six centuries they pos- 
sessed England under a social arrangement altogether different 
from the present ; one in which their law of partition of property 
among all the children, excluding the feudal principle of primo- 
geniture, would produce this subdivision of the land into small 
distinct fields. 

France is now, by the abolition of the feudal tenure of land, 
and of the law of primogeniture, recommencing a state of society 
which was extinguished in England by the Norman conquest and 
the laws of succession adopted from that period. France is in the 
midst of a great social experiment. Its results upon civilization 
can only be guessed at now, and will only be distinctly seen, 
perhaps, after the lapse of ages. The opinions of all our political 
economists are adverse to it. Listen to the groans of the most 
acute observers of our days, on the appalling consequences of this 
division of landed property. Says Arthur Young, in 1789, (con- 
sequently before the sale of the national domains, crown and 
church estates, and confiscated estates of the noblesse, and before 
the law of partition of property among all the children became 
obligatory on all classes of the community,) " Small properties, 
much divided, prove the greatest source of misery that can possibly 
be conceived, and has operated to such a degree and extent in 
France, that a law ought certainly to be made to render all divi- 



64 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

sion below a certain number of arpens illegal." Arthur Young 
wrote this just about fifty years ago, and a few months only before 
a law was passed directly opposed to the principle he recommends 
— the law aboUshing the rights of primogeniture, and making the 
division of property among all the children obligatory; and which 
law has been ever since, that is, for nearly half a century, in gene- 
ral and uninterrupted operation. Listen, again, to Mr. Birbeck, 
a traveller of no ordinary sagacity. " Poor," says he, of the 
French people under this law, " from generation to generation, 
and growing continually poorer as they increase in numbers — in 
the country, by the incessant division and subdivision of property; 
in the towns, by the division and subdivision of trades and profes- 
sions — such a people, instead of proceeding from the necessaries 
to the comforts of life, and then to the luxuries, as is the condition 
of things in England, are rather retrograde than progressive. 
There is no advancement in French society, no improvement, no 
hope of it." Hear, too, the chirp of Mr. Peter Paul Cobbett in 
his Ride through France. " Here, in Normandy, great lamentation 
on account of this revolutionary law. They tell me it has dis- 
persed thousands upon thousands of farnihes who had been upon 
the same spot for centuries." Listen, too, to the thunders of the 
Edinburgh Review. " In no country of Europe is there such a 
vast body of proprietors (one half of the population of France is 
stated in the preceding paragraph to be proprietors), and in no 
civilized European country, with the exception of Ireland, is there 
so large a proportion of the population (stated to be two-thirds) 
engaged directly in the cultivation, or rather, we should say, in 
the torture of the soil. And yet the system is but in its infancy. 
Should it be supported for another half century, la grandt nation 
will certainly be the greatest pauper warren in Europe, and will, 
along with Ireland, have the honour of furnishing hewers of wood 
and drawers of water for all other countries in the world." Alas, 
for human wisdom ! Alas, for the predictions of Arthur Young, 
Mr. Birbeck, and the Edinburgh Review ! But who can be a 
prophet at home? Not that their prophecies were undervalued 
at home ; but their home-made prophecies were of no value — 
were framed upon narrow, local views and prejudices. When 
new social arrangements, diametrically opposed in principle and 
spirit to the feudal, grew up, and unfolded themselves, first in 
America and afterwards in France, and gradually spread from 
thence over great part of the present Prussia, the feudalized minds 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 65 

of our Scotch political economists were lavish in their predictions 
of the degradation, misery, and barbarism which must inevitably 
ensue among that portion of the human race who were so un 
fortunate as to adopt the dictates of nature and reason in their 
legislation on property and social rank, instead of adhering to 
conventional and barbarous laws and institutions derived from 
the darkest period of the middle ages. 

If natural affection, humanity, reason, religion — if all that dis- 
tinguishes man from the brute creation— speak more clearly in 
the human breast on the obhgation of one duty than of another, 
it is on that of the parent providing equally according to his 
means for all the beings he has brought into existence and added 
to society ; leaving none of them to want and distress if he can 
help it, or to chance for a precarious subsistence, or to be sup- 
ported by his neighbours out of their alms, as paupers, or out of 
their taxes, as useless functionaries, or by uncertain dependence 
upon employment, and bread from others. Is not this a moral 
and religious duty? Is it not the clearest duty of the parent, not 
only to the offspring he has brought into existence, but to the 
social body of which he and they are members ? Can any argu- 
ment of expediency drawn from our artificial state of society 
under the feudal system and feudal law of succession to property, 
and of the advantage of that system, turn away the natural sen- 
timents of men from this great moral duty to their own offspring? 
from this great moral duty to the rest of society? Yet listen to 
the morality and political economy taught lately in no obscure 
corner, and to no uninfluential pupils, but from the Divinity chair 
of the University of Edinburgh to the young men who were to 
go forth, and are now, the religious and moral instructors of the 
people in the established church of Scotland. " VVe know," says 
Dr. Chalmers in his Political Economy in Connection ivit/i the 
Moral State and Moral Prospects of Society ; being the sub- 
stance of a Course of Lectures delivered to the Students of the 
Theological Hall in Edinburgh, — "We know," says this dis- 
tinguished philosopher, " that there is a mighty force of sentiment 
and natural affection arrayed against the law of primogeniture. 
But here is the way in which we would appease these feelings, 
and make compensation for the violence done to them. We 
would make no inroad on the integrity of estates, or, for the sake 
of a second brother, take ofl"to the extent of a thousand a year 



66 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

from that domain of ten thousand a year which devolved by- 
succession on the eldest son of the family. We should think it 
vastly better, if, by means of a liberal provision in all the branches 
of the public service, a place of a thousand a year lay open to the 
younger son, whether in the law, or in the church, or in colleges, 
or in any other well-appointed establishment kept up for the good 
and interest of the nation." 

Will the teachers, or the taught, of this new school of morality 
and political economy in the Theological Hall of Edinburgh ex- 
plain the moral principle on which they recommend the getting 
rid of " a mighty force of sentiment and natural affection," and 
'• the appeasing those feelings, and making compensation for the 
violence done to them," by places of a thousand a year, or by 
any other pecuniary compensation in the public service ? The 
'• mighty force of sentiment and natural affection," the " feelings 
to be appeased and compensated for the violence done them" 
by places in the church, or the law, or in colleges, or some other 
well-appointed establishment, are nothing less sacred, or of less 
moral value than the paternal affection and the moral sentiment 
of justice to others, urging on the feelings of the parent to pro- 
vide equally for each of his children to the utmost of his means ; 
and dictating to him, as a man, the moral duty to his fellow-men 
of not imposing upon them the burden of maintaining his progeny, 
either as paupers, or as superfluous public functionaries, if he has 
property to maintain them himself. Will the teachers or the 
taught of this new school of moral and political philosophy in the 
University of Edinburgh explain the moral, religious, or philoso- 
phical principle of this " appeasing and compensating" for the 
sacrifice of natural affection, moral feeling, and sentiment of duty, 
by places in the church, or the law, or in any other well-ap- 
pointed establishments? Tliey are not in the position of ordi- 
nary men speaking or writing speculatively on morals, and re- 
sponsible only as idle uninfluential philosophers, or political 
writers, for the errors of their speculations. The men who are 
the professional teachers of the people in morals and religion are 
bound to hold none but the clearest and purest doctrines — to 
teach, and to be taught, nothing obscure or doubtful in political, 
moral, or religious science. The feudal system, with its corner- 
stone, the law of primogeniture, may be a very good or very 
expedient system; but it is admitted by themselves to be an arti- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER, 67 

ficial arrangement of society and property, not established and 
uplreld in the human mind by nature or religion, but, on the con- 
trary, one against which " there is a mighty force of sentiment 
and natural affection arrayed." Will they explain the moral 
principle of their doctrine, that the most virtuous feelings in our 
nature— the mighty force of natural affection for our children, 
and the mighty force of the sentiment of justice to our fellow- 
men — should be sacrificed to support an artificial system or ar- 
rangement of society, be that system or arrangement ever so 
expedient or beneficial ? Will they explain the moral principle 
upon which they recommend " the appeasing those natural feel- 
ings of affection and moral duty, and the compensating for the 
violence done to them," by anappointment of a tliousand a year, 
or by any other pecuniary compensation ? Will they explain 
the moral difference between the conduct of the owner of a 
domain of ten thousand a year who leaves it all to his eldest son, 
and leaves his youngest son to be provided for by his neighbours 
out of their taxes, in some appointment of a thousand a year in 
the church, or the law, or in any other public establishment — 
which is the case propounded and recommended by them — and 
the conduct of the wretched female who exposes her new-born 
babe on her neighbour's door-step to be provided for out of his 
means ? The moral guilt of the latter, driven by want and 
misery to abandon the infant she is unable to maintain, appears 
to all men, whose moral sense has not been cultivated at the 
Theological Hall of the University of Edinburgh, infinitely less 
than that of the man of ten thousand a year who abandons his 
younger children to the support of the public, in order to leave all 
his estate to the eldest son. Will they explain the moral grounds 
of their teaching that the abandonment of his parental and social 
duties to his offspring, and to his fellow-men, is a laudable act in 
the case of the rich domain owner, and the same abandonment 
an immoral and criminal act in the case of the wretched strum- 
pet ? Xhey are the teachers of the people of Scotland, whose 
principles of moral and political philosophy, as laid down in their 
own text-book, are here arraigned, and they ought to satisfy 
every do^ibt that is suggested to the public mind, either of the 
moral purity or of the philosophical correctness of their specula- 
tions. Will they explain the principle and justice of their politi- 
cal economy on this subject, and also its working and ellccis in 



68 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

society ? If the owner of a domain of ten thousand a year is 
morally, and for the general benefit of society, entitled to a pro- 
vision of a thousand a year for his younger son from the rest of 
the community — for they, the rest, pay with their taxes the ap- 
pointments in the law, the church, and all other branches of 
public service, which it is proposed and recommended to establish 
for the benefit of the younger sons of those rich paupers, and as 
a compensation to the latter for having stifled their natural affec- 
tions as parents, and their sense of duty to their fellow-men — that 
younger son must be equally entitled to a provision for his 
younger son ; for he too has natural affection and a moral sense 
to stifle and to be compensated for. How long, to what extent, 
and with what effect on the well-being of society, is this clerical 
system of political economy to work, by which the property of 
all is to be devoted to the subsistence, in highly paid offices, of a 
part of the community ? Will they also explain if all those 
younger sons of domain owners, thus to be provided for ad in- 
finitum at the public expense, in order to enable and encourage 
wealthy parents to stifle the feelings of natural affection and so- 
cial duty, and leave undiminished their domains of ten thousand 
a year to their eldest sons, are all to be born with the necessary 
qualifications for those liberal appointments in the church, or in 
the law, or in the public service, which it is proposed to establish 
for their subsistence ? Are they, for instance, to be born clergy- 
men of the church of Scotland, with all the talents and acquire- 
ments needful, or are they only to bring into the world with them 
all the learning and divinity necessary, but are t-o acquire their 
principles of moral philosophy and political economy at the 
Theological Hall at the University of Edinburgh ? 

It is the duty of every inquirer into political and social economy 
to raise his voice against such attempts to educate a people into 
the support of any social or political system founded on mere 
expediency, not upon moral principle; and which is not the only 
social arrangement among civilized men, nor proved by reasoning 
or experience to be incontrovertibly the best for the general well- 
being of a community. This is perverting education to the most 
despicable end — the support of a political system. Other social 
arrangements than the feudal do exist in civilized countries. Re- 
ligion, morality, and social well-being flourish in those countries, 
as well as in those feudally constituted. To enlist the passions 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 69 

or prejudices of mankind by education into a partisanship for one 
or tlie other constitution of society, to inculcate the sacrifice of 
moral duty, of natural sentiment, of the highest affections and 
feelings of human beings, for the support of one or the other 
social arrangement on account of its real or supposed expediency, 
is unsound doctrine. Are these but idle speculations, which, 
sound or unsound, are confined within the walls of the closet or 
the class-room, and have no influence upon the movement of the 
real affairs of the world ? They make a wrong estimate of the 
mfluence of speculative doctrine in society, who think so. The 
bias given in the education of the public mind, to consider the 
support of a caste, or class, or conventional arrangement in so- 
ciety, as an object to which natural sentiment and moral duty 
ought to be sacrificed, may be traced in the support given at this 
day to the claim of a state-established church to a power inde- 
pendent of the state. To set aside the first of the moral duties 
of man as a member of society — the support of that power esta- 
blished by the social body for its government — and to erect a 
church-power independent of that government, with a caste, 
class, or body of men not subject to its laws, is a natural sequence 
from this unsound doctrine in political and moral philosophy 
taught in the University of Edinburgh. 

The condition of Ireland, divided and subdivided among a 
small tenantry whose savings, be it remembered, by wretched 
diet, lodging, and raiment, and the privation of every comfort of 
civilized life, is a saving which goes, in the shape of high rent, 
into the pockets of another class, the land-owners, not into their 
own pockets as the gains of their frugality to be added to their 
property, or means of expenditure, was, and still is, the grand 
bugbear of our Scotch political economists, and still furnishes 
the main argument against the distribution of landed property 
through the social body by the natural and moral law of succes- 
sion. They did not, and do not at present consider the somewhat 
important difference of people being the owners or not the owners 
of the land divided. The belly is too faithful a counsellor to the 
head, to allow a man to sit down to live upon a piece of land of 
his own, if it be not large enough to support him in the way he 
hag'been accustomed to live. lie turns his property into another 
shape — into money — and makes a living out of it as a tradesman. 
Between the condition of such a land-owner and an Irish cottar- 



70 NOTES 0F A TRAVELLER. 

tenant there is the important difference, that the former has a 
capital which he may keep in land, or invest in leather or sugar: 
he may be a peasant or a shoemaker, or a grocer, according to 
his judgment; and if he lives merely upon potatoes and water, 
what he spares is increasing his capital and means of gratification 
in some other shape. The Irish cottar-tenant has no property to 
begin with in the land or in anything else. He is, and his whole 
class, in consequence of the working of the law of primogeniture 
in society, pauper ab initio ; and all that is spared by his inferior 
condition, in respect of the comforts and necessaries of life, goes 
into his landlord's pocket, in the shape of rent, not into his own 
as the savings of his own prudence and frugality. He is also 
placed in a false position by the land-holders of Ireland, even as 
compared to the cottar-tenantry, which existed formerly all over 
Scotland, and still continue in the northern counties. The latter 
were generally charged a rent in kind, that is, in a proportion of 
the crops produced, or with a reference to the average crops of the 
land. The peasant could understand the simple data before him, 
knew at once whether the land could produce enough to feed his 
family and leave a surplus such as was demanded for rent, and, 
if not, he sought a living in some other employment. His stand- 
ard of living was not deteriorated by his rent in kind, because he 
had a clearly seen surplus of the best as well as of the worst of 
the products of his farm for family consumption, after paying the 
portion of these products that were his rent. The Irish small 
tenantry, on the contrary, have to pay for their land in money. 
It would be just as reasonable to make them pay for their land 
in French wines for the squire, or Parisian dresses for the lady. 
Their land produces neither gold, nor silver, nor Irish bank notes. 
It is not reasonable to make the peasant, the ignorant man, pay 
in those commodities — they are but commodities, like wines and 
silks — and to make men, simple, inexperienced in trade, and a 
prey to market-jobbers, to run the double mercantile risk of sell- 
ing their own commodities, and buying those in which their land- 
lords choose to be paid their rents. The great capitalist-farmer 
may choose to add the trade of the corn-merchant to that of the 
agriculturist, and to take the mercantile as well as the agricul- 
tural risks and profits upon himself; but even the shrewdest of 
this class, the great farmers of the south of Scotland, are dropping, 
as fast as they can, this mercantile branch of farming-business, 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 71 

and coming back to the natural principle of flirming, that of pay- 
ing for their land a proportion of what the land produces, so 
many bolls of grain per acre — throwing upon the laird the risk 
wliich, in reason and common sense, ought to devolve upon him, 
that of turning his share of the produce raised by the farmer's 
labour, skill, and capital, out of his acres, into gold or bank bills. 

Money rent deteriorates the condition of a small tenant in two 
ways. The more honestly he is inclined, the more poorly and 
meanly he must live. He must sell all his best produce, his grain, 
his butter, his flax, his pig, and subsist upon the meanest of food, 
his worst potatoes and water, to make sure of money for his rent. 
It thus deteriorates his standard of living. He is also tempted 
by money-rent out of the path of certainty into that of chance. 
It thus deteriorates his moral condition. Ask him six barrels of 
oats, or barley, or six stones of butter, or flax, for a piece of land 
which never produced four, and his common sense and expe- 
rience guide him. He sees, and comprehends the simple data 
before him, knows from his experience that such a crop cannot 
be raised, such a rent cannot be afforded, and he is off" to England 
or America to seek a living. But ask him six guineas per acre, 
for a piece of land proportionably as much over-rented as the 
other, and he trusts to chance, to accident, to high market prices, 
to odd jobs of work turning up, to summer or harvest labour out 
of the country — in short, he does not know to what ; for he is 
placed in a false position, made to depend upon chance of markets, 
and on mercantile success and profits, as much as upon industry 
and skill in working his little farm. 

In all those respects the condition of the small tenant and that 
of the small proprietor are so totally different, that our political 
economists reason upon false data, when they conclude that a 
country divided among small proprietors must necessarily present 
or fall into the same evils in the social condition of the people, as 
a country occupied by a small over-rented tenantry. 

They set out, also, in their speculations, with a false axiom. 
They admit that a certainty of subsistence — food, fuel, clothing, 
and lodging, being all comprehended under this term subsistence 
— is the first and greatest good in the physical condition of nn 
individual or of a society ; and they assume it as an axiom, that 
those parts of a social body, those individuals or classes, who are 
employed in producing articles of general use or desire among 



72 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

men — to put the case in the strongest hght, say blacksmiths, 
tailors, shoemakers, and such classes as produce articles which 
every individual in the community requires and u^es — are as 
near to this first and greatest good of a certain subsistence by 
their work, as those immediately employed in its production by 
husbandry. Now this may be true, where husbandry is a manu- 
facture, as with us in Britain, for producing by hired labourers the 
greatest quantity possible of grain, meat, and other products out 
of the soil, to be exchanged against the products of other branches 
of industry. It may be true that the hired labourers of the manu- 
facturer of corn from land are no nearer to a certainty of sub- 
sistence than the hired labourer of the manufacturer of cloth or 
leather. But it is not true, where husbandry is followed, as in 
France, and in the countries divided among a small proprietary, 
for the sake of subsisting the husbandman himself, the actual 
labourer on the land, as its first object; and where the exchanging 
its products for other articles, even of general use and necessity, 
is but a secondary object. A man will not give up his needful 
food, fuel, clothing, or lodging, to gratify even his real and most 
pressing wants of iron-work, leather-work, or cloth-work. His 
surplus only will be applied to acquiring those secondary neces- 
saries of life ; and those who live by making them are, conse- 
quently, far from being so near to that first good in social con- 
dition, a certain subsistence, as he is. But if two-thirds of the 
population of a country be in the situation of this individual, who 
has his certain subsistence out of his own land by his own labour, 
and depends upon no man's surplus for his own needful food, 
fuel clothing, and lodging, I take that to be a good state of society, 
a better arrangement of the social structure than where needful 
subsistence is not certain to the great majority of its numbers. It 
carries, moreover, within itself, a check upon over-population 
and the consequent deterioration of the social condition, and which 
is totally wanting in the other social system. In even the most 
useful and necessary arts and manufactures, the demand for la- 
bourers is not a seen, known, steady, and appreciable demand ; 
but it is so in husbandry under this social construction. The 
labour to be done, the subsistence that labour will produce out of 
his portion of land, are seen and known elements in a man's cal- 
culation upon his means of subsistence. Can his square of land, 
or can it not, subsist a family ? Can he marry, or not ? are ques- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. - 73 

tions which every man can answer without delay, doubt, or 
speculation. It is the depending on chance, where judgment has 
nothing clearly set before it, that causes reckless, improvident 
marriages in the lower, as in the higher classes, and produces 
among us the evils of over-population ; and chance necessarily 
enters into every man's calculations, when certainty is removed 
altogether ; as it is, where certain subsistence is, by our distribu- 
tion of property, the lot of but a small portion, instead of about 
two-thirds of the people. 

Another axiom taken up as granted, and as quite undeniable, 
by our agriculturists and political economists, is that small farms 
are incompatible with a high or perfect state of cultivation in a 
country. In the same breath they recommend a garden-like cul- 
tivation of the land. Pray what is a garden but a small farm ? 
and what do they recommend, but that a large farm should be, as 
nearly as possible, brought into the state of cultivation and produc- 
tiveness of a garden or small farm? This can only be done, they 
tell us, by the application of large capitals, such as small farmers 
cannot command, to agriculture : let us reduce these grand words 
to their proper value. Capital signifies the means of purchasing 
labour; the application of capital to agriculture means the appli- 
cation of labour to land. A man's own labour, as far as it goes, is 
as good as any he can buy, nay, a great deal better, because it is 
attended by a perpetual overseer— his self-interest, watching that 
it is not wasted or misapplied. If this labour be applied to a 
suitable, not too large nor too small, area of soil, it is capital 
applied to land, and the best kind of capital, and applied in the 
best way to a garden-like cultivation. A garden is better dug, 
and manured, and weeded, and drained, and is proportionably far 
more productive than a large flirm', because more toil and labour, 
that is, more capital is bestowed upon it, in proportion to its area. 
A small farm held, not by the temporary right of a tenant, and 
under the burden of a heavy rent, but by the owner of the soil, 
and cultivated by the labour of his family, is precisely the prin- 
ciple of gardening, applied to farming ; and in the countries in 
which land has long been occupied and cultivated in small farms 
by the owners— in Tuscany, Switzerland, and Flanders— the 
garden-like cultivation and productiveness of the soil are cried 
up by those very agriculturists and political economists, who cry 
down the means, the only means, by which it can be attained 



74 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER, 

universally in a country— the division of the land into small, 
garden-like estates farmed by the proprietors. It is possible that 
the family of the small proprietor-farmer consume almost all that 
they produce, and have very little surplus to send to market; 
but that merely affects the proportions of the population engaged 
in producing food, and in producing objects to be exchanged for 
food. The produce supports the same number of human beings 
— every potato finds a mouth — whether the whole of it belongs 
to one man, who sells it for the labour and productions of the 
rest of the number, or belongs in small portions to the whole. 
The traveher who considers the prices, supplies, and varieties of 
agricultural food in the market towns in Flanders, France, Swit- 
zerland, and the liberal use, or more correctly, the abundance 
and waste in the cooking and housekeeping of all classes in 
those countries, will scarcely admit, even, that in proportion to 
the number of the whole community not engaged in husbandry, 
a smaller surplus for their consumpt is sent to market by the 
small farmers. It cannot be denied that a minute division of the 
land into small, free, garden-like properties, seems, a priori, more 
favourable to a garden-like cultivation of a country than its divi- 
sion into vast baronial estates, and the subdivision of these into 
extensive farms, on which the actual husbandmen, as a class, are 
but hired labourers, having no interest in the productions of the 
soil, and no object in their work but to get the day over. 

How stand the statistical facts that bear upon this important 
question ? It is stated by Dupin, that the amount of arable land at 
present in France is but little more than it was in 17S9, but that 
the population is increased by about eight millions; and in con- 
sequence of the division of property by the law of succession, that 
one-half of the whole population are proprietors, and counting 
their families, two-thirds of the whole are engaged in the direct 
cuUivation of the soil. It will not be said by the most strenuous 
advocate of those feudal arrangements of society which the French 
revolution annihilated in France, that the French peopie now are 
worse fed, worse clothed, worse lodged, or less generally provided 
■with the necessaries, comforts, and luxuries of life, than they were 
before 17S9, before the revolution, when Arthur Young described 
the wretched condition of the people. The imports and consumpt 
of the tropical products in France prove how superior, beyond all 
comparison, is the present stale of the people. Now how is this 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 75 

additional popLilation of eight millions of individuals fed from the 
same extent of arable land, if not by their superior cultivation of 
that land ? The same extent of arable land is supporting about 
one-third more people — for the population of France was then 
reckoned about 25 millions, and now about 33 millions— and in 
greater abundance and comfort. How is this, if the land is not 
in a more productive cultivation under the present division into 
small properties? It is evident from the statistical facts, that with- 
out any noticeable improvement in the modes, rotations, or uten- 
sils of husbandry, tlie mere subdivision of the area to which 
labour is applied into small-property farms cultivated in a garden- 
like way, and the converting the labour formerly applied to the 
same area, from hired labour, or perl^aps unpaid labour of serfs, 
into the labour of proprietors working on their own land, are 
sufficient to account for a more garden-like cultivation and pro- 
ductiveness of the same extent of arable land. Two generations 
of adults, or fifty years have passed away under the deteriorating 
efi'ects of the partition of land denounced by Arthur Young, in 
17S9, as even then "the greatest source of misery that can be 
conceived." This greatest conceivable source of misery has not 
diminished the population, nor made it more miserable. This 
partition and repartition of land have not reduced all estates to one 
minimum size, like an Irish cotter's acre. Estates of all sizes and 
values, from 500/. to 50,000/. in price, are to be found on sale in 
France, as in England. The aggregation of land by deaths of 
co-relatives, balances the partition of land by deaths of parents. 
The application even of great capitals, and scientific skill to ob- 
jects of husbandry, has not been impeded by this partition of 
land. The capital, for example, laid out in France in establish- 
ments for making beet-root sugar, is greater, perhaps, than has 
been laid out in Britain during the same period on any one agri- 
cultural object. The thing itself, the making sugar from beet- 
root, as an agricultural operation in modern husbandry, may be 
impolitic, if such sugar can only be made under protecting duties, 
and if sugar can be got cheaper, and without slave labour, from 
the West Indies— a point not at all ascertained ; but the value of 
the fact for our argument remains the same. A beet-root sugar 
work requires science, skill, expensive machinery, and very con- 
siderable capital. Hydraulic presses of the best construction 
to express the juice, and steam engines to pump it up, arc not 



76 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

rare in beet-root sugar works. I have visited one in the Pas de 
Calais, in which the presses and engines had been made in Lon- 
don for the work, at a time when we scarcely knew that such an 
agricultural object existed and was, carried on so near us. At 
present, that is in 1841, France has 389 beet-root sugar works in 
activity, although no longer favoured or protected by any unequal 
duty on colonial sugar; and from January, 1840, to the end of 
May, 1841, these have delivered to the consumpt of the country 
26,174,547 kilogrammes, or 5,234,909^ cwt., which have paid in 
duty to the revenue 3,205,783 francs. The total consumpt of 
France, yearly, appears to be about 16,518,840 cwt. of sugar. It 
may, perhaps, be a question whether in all England south of 
Trent, there can be found so many threshing machines of the best 
and most expensive construction — such as cost from 800/. to 
1200/,, in the best agricultural districts of Northumberland, Rox- 
burghshire, and the Lothians — as France, under her partition law 
of succession, can produce of these complicated, and far more ex- 
pensive establishments. 

The social effects of the partition of property upon the condi- 
tion of the people, as well as the economical effects on their agri- 
culture, are very wide of those preconceived and predicted. What 
has been the march of society under this law since 1816, when 
France first began to enjoy it in a settled state of peace ? In the 
first seven or eight years after 1816, all society had still a martial 
air and habit. The soldier was everything and everywhere; 
Boys would strut about, and have you believe that they had seen 
fire at Montmartre, or, at the least, had been with the army 
of the Loire. For the first tly-ee or four years, France was one 
great camp of disbanded soldiers swaggering, and idling about, 
in town and country. The small proprietors had not confidence 
in the security of their portions of confiscated domains of the 
church, or of the emigrant noblesse, and had not the means or 
courage to improve them. The predictions of our political econo- 
mists seemed hastening to fulfillment. But in the next period of 
six or eight years, a change came over the spirit of the land. The 
military mania abated. On se lasse de tout, especially in France. 
The soldier was in the back ground. The vietix militaire was 
voted a tiresome, old, stupid bore. Idlers of the middle and lower 
classes were evidently diminishing in numbers and importance. 
The young men you met with in the diligence, or at the table- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 77 

d'hote, were no longer billiard-table loungers and half-pay officers, 
but sons of proprietors from the south, selling their wines in the 
northern departments, or of merchants and manufacturers from 
the north, extending their business in the south. Industry was 
evidently on the move. Houses were in building in every village. 
The small land-owners had acquired means and confidence, and 
were beginning to lodge themselves on tlieir little estates. Prices, 
profits, speculations, undertakings, establishments in business, en- 
grossed all conversation among all classes. Now, in the last 
period of seven or eight years, the French are passing from a 
military to an industrious people, as rapidly as such a change in 
the spirit of so vast a mass of population so lately military, can 
be expected. This change in the spirit of a nation cannot be 
rapid, because there is at first an under supply of commercial and 
manufacturing means, and objects, to employ the activity and 
restlessness of mind reared in military habits ; and the government, 
unfortunately, agitates for military pre-eminence in Europe, in- 
stead of favouring the advance of peaceful habits in the popula- 
tion; but the change evidently is in progress, is advancing, is far 
advanced, and all France is undoubtedly alive with an industry, 
and a commercial and manufacturing spirit, unknown at any 
former period of her history. 

The condition of the French people as to food, clothing, and the 
comforts of life, compared to their condition before 1789, is un- 
doubtedly better. What is the condition of their labouring class at 
present, compared to that of our own ? The only means of com- 
parison is to take one class of men, \those condition is in all 
countries the same relatively to that of the common labourer, the 
military — and to compare the condition of the common labourer in 
each country, with that of the common soldier. Now in England, 
since 181G, no bounty, or very trifling bounty, is required to obtain 
recruits for the army : and none but men of the best description 
as to age, health, and stature, are received. The inference to be 
made is, that the condition of our common soldier is so much better 
than, or so equal to the condition of our common labourer, that 
little or no inducement of bounty is required to make able-bodied 
men enlist in sufficient numbers. But the condition of our soldier 
has not been altered for the better since the peace, since 1S16. It 
is the condition of our labouring class that h\is altered for the 
worse. In England, as in France, the soldier is fed, paid, lodged, 



78 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

and clothed, precisely as he was five-and-tvventy years ago. But 
in France, aUhough the term of service is only for six years, so 
far are the labouring class from such a condition as to enlist with- 
out the inducement of bounty, that from 1800 to 2000 francs, or 
80/. sterling, is usually offered for a recruit, to serve as a substitute 
for one who is drawn by ballot for the army. Clubs and assur- 
ance companies are established all over France, for providing 
substitutes for the members who may happen to be drawn for 
service. The inference to be made is, that here the condition of 
the common labourer is too good to be exchanged for that of the 
common soldier without the inducement of a premium ; his labour 
too valuable to be given for the mere living and pay of the soldier, 
although the soldier's pay and living are as good, in proportion 
to the habits of the people and price of provisions, as in England. 
How ludicrous, as one sits on the deck of a fine steam-vessel 
going down the Saone, or the Rhone, or the Seine, passing e very- 
half hour. other steam-vessels, and every five or six miles under 
iron suspension bridges, and past canals, short factory railroads 
even, and new-built factories — how laughable, now, to read the 
'lugubrious predictions of Arthur Young half a century ago, of 
Eirbeck a quarter of a century ago, of the Edinburgh Review some 
twenty years ago, about the inevitable consequences of the French 
law of succession. " A pauper warren !" Look up from the 
page and laugh. Look around upon the actual prosperity, and 
well-being, and the rising industry of this people under their 
system. Look at the activity on their rivers, at the new factory 
chimneys against the horizon, at the steam-boats, canals, roads, 
coal works, wherever nature gives any opening to enterprise. 
France owes her present prosperity, and rising industry, to this 
very system of subdivision of property, which allows no man to 
live in idleness, and no capital to be expended without a view to 
its reproduction, and places that great instrument of industry and 
well-being, property, in the hands of all classes. The same area 
of arable land, according to Dupin, feeds now a population greater 
by eight millions, and certainly in greater abundance and comfort, 
than under the former system of succession ; because now its pro- 
duce is applied to feeding reproductive labourers, who, either in 
husbandry on their own little estates, or in manufactures, or trade, 
are producing, while they are consuming, what brings back either 
consumable produce, or the value of what they consume, in due 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 79 

time. But the produce applied to the feedhig of soldiery, of la- 
bourers employed by a splendid court in works of mere ostenta- 
tion and grandeur, in building palaces, or constructing magnificent 
public works of no utility equivalent to the labour expended, and 
to a certain extent, even in the fine arts, and, above all, in support- 
ing a numerous idle aristocracy, gentry, and clergy, with their 
dependent followers, was a waste of means, a consumpt without 
any corresponding return of consumable or saleable produce from 
the labour or industry of the consumers. In this view, the com- 
parison between the old feudal construction of society in France, 
and the new under the present law of succession, resolves itself into 
this result, — that one-third more people are supported under the 
new, in greater abundance and comfort, from the same extent of 
arable land, in consequence of the law of succession having swept 
off the non-productive classes, forced them into active industry, 
and obliged all consumers, generally speaking, to be producers 
also, while they consume. In this view, the cost of supporting 
the old court, aristocracy, gentry, clergy, and all the system and 
arrangements of society in Frsfnce, under the ancient regime, has 
been equivalent to the cost of supporting one-third more inhabit- 
ants in France, and in greater comfort and well-being ; and this 
is the gain France has realized by her revolution, and by the abo- 
lition of the law of primogeniture, its most important measure. 

Let us do justice to the French character. Their self-command, 
their upon-honour principle, is very remarkable, and much more 
generally diffused than among our own population. They are, I 
believe, a more honest people than the British. The beggar who 
is evidently hungry, respects the fruit upon the road-side' within 
ills reach, although there is nobody to protect it. Property is much 
respected in France; and in bringing up children, this fidelity 
towards the property of others seems much more carefully incul- 
cated by parents in the lowest class, in the home education of 
their children, than with us. This respect for the property is 
closely connected with that respect for the feelings of our neigh- 
bours, which constitutes what is called good manners. This is 
carefully inculcated in children of all ranks in France. They are 
taught to do what is pleasing and agreeable to others. We arc 
too apt to undervalue this spirit, as tending merely to superficial 
accomplishments, to empty compliment in words, and unmeaning 
appearance in acts. But, in reality, this reference to the feelings 



80 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

of Others in all we do is a moral habit of great value where it is 
generally diffused, and enters into the home training of every 
family. It is an education both of the parent and child in morals, 
carried on through the medium of external manners. Our lower 
and middle classes are deficient in this kind of family education ; 
and there is some danger that the parents in those classes may 
come to rely too much with us, for all education, upon the parish 
and Sunday schools. It is but reading, writing, reckoning, and 
the catechism, after all, that can be taught a people by the most 
perfect system of national school education; and 'those acquire- 
ments would be dearly bought if they interfere with or supersede 
family instruction, and parental example, and admonition in the 
right and wrong in conduct, morals, and manners. It is a fine 
distinction of the French national character, and social economy, 
that practical morality is more generally taught through manners, 
among and by the people themselves, than in any country in 
Europe. One or two striking instances of this general respect for 
property have occurred to me in travelling in France.. I once 
forgot my umbrella in a diligence •going to Bourdeaux, in which 
I travelled as far as Tours. My umbrella went on to Bourdeaux 
and returned to Tours in the corner of the coach, without being 
appropriated by any of the numerous passengers, or work people, 
who must have passed through it on so long a journey, and have 
had this stray unowned article before them. I once travelled 
from Paris to Boulogne with a gentleman who had come up the 
same road a few days before. We were conversing on this very 
subject, the honesty of the people in general, and he recollected 
having left on the table of one of the inns half a basket of grapes, 
worth about twelve sous, which, he said, he was sure he would 
find safe. On arriving, he asked the waiter if he had seen the 
grapes, and they were instantly produced, as a matter of course, 
out of a press in which they had been carefully put away as 
property not belonging to the house. It is the great diffusion and 
exposure of property in small things, among a nation of small 
proprietors, that produce this regard for its safety even in trifles, 
this practical morality. It is not the value lost, but the injury to 
the feeling of ownership, which constitutes the criminality or rather 
the injury, in many petty aggressions on property; and respect 
for the feelings of others enters into the manners and morals of 
the French. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 81 

Society left to itself will, probably, always work itself up to its 
moral wants. The moral condition of France, from 1794 to 1816, 
had certainly no aid from the clerical, educational, civil, or military 
establishments of its government, or from the wars and tumults 
in which the country was engaged ; yet countries blessed, during 
all that period, with the fullest, most powerful, and best endowed 
church establishments, as part of their government, may envy the 
moral condition of the great mass of the French people. The 
social economist, who looks at France and at the United States 
of America, will pause before he admits in its fullest extent the 
usual clerical assumption, that a powerful church establislniient, 
and an union of church and state, are essential to the morality, 
piety, or education of a people. He will be apt to conclude, that 
society left to itself will provide according to its wants, and to its 
recipient capabilities, for education, morals, and religion — that 
these must grow naturally out of social circumstances, and cannot 
be forced by establishments, clerical or educational, into any whole- 
some existence — and that a people will no more fall into barbarism, 
or retrograde in civilization, from the want of establishments suita- 
ble to their social condition, than a family will turn cannibals from 
wanting a butcher's shop or a cook. 

It is nearly half a century since the decimal division of money, 
weights, and measures, was adopted by the French Convention, 
and by every succeeding government it has been adhered to, and 
enforced by law. The learned in all other countries, as well as 
in France, are unanimous in recommending its adoption, on ac- 
count of the greater practical facility in op'erations and accounts, 
of the decimal than the duodecimal division of weights, measures, 
and money ; yet, in spite of law and science, the French people 
continue to use the duodecimal division. They persist in thinking 
duodecimally, even when by law they must express themselves 
decimally. Is this obstinate adherence to the least perfect and 
most diflicult mode of reckoning quantity, or value in the ordi- 
nary afikirs of life, the effect of mere prejudice, of blind custom, 
of the perversity, in short, of the public mind ? I suspect the 
cause lies deeper. Prejudice, custom, or perversity, will not make 
people forego a clear advantage. Men of science, and legislators, 
in recommending and adopting the decimal division, have con- 
sidered only the arithmetical operations to be performed with 
numerals ; but not the nature of the subjects to which those 



82 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

operations with numerals are applied. Weights, measures of 
capacity or of extension, and money, are measures applied to the 
products of nature, or of human industry, and to their value in 
exchange with other products through the medium of money. 
Now the value of the products either of nature, or of art, is the 
time and labour involved in them. The value of the most valu- 
able of natural products, the diamond, has the same base as the 
value of a pin, — it is the value of scarcity ; that is to say, of the 
time and labour it will cost to find such another diamond, or 
to make such another pin. The value of those two elements — 
time and labour — is what we buy, and sell, and record in our ac- 
counts, and to which all measurement of quantity with a reference 
to value, and all reckoning in the ordinary transactions of life, 
refer.* One of these two elements— time — regulates, in a conside- 
rable degree, the value of the other — labour— and is the usual 
measure of it. It is the time employed by which we measure the 
work done, and estimate its value in ordinary affairs. But time 
is divided by nature duodecimaliy, not decimally. The four 
seasons, the twelve months, of a year, the four weeks in a month, 
the twenty -four hours in a day, the twelve working hours, the 
hours of light and darkness, the six working days in a week, are 
partly natural divisions of time connected with changes in our 
planetary position, and partly conventional, such as the number 
of working hours in a day, or of working days in a week, but 
derived from the natural divisions, and all are duodecimaliy 
divided. Labour being estimated by time, and time divided 
duodecimaliy, the products of time and labour— that is to say, all 
that men buy, sell, use, or estimate in reckoning — a-re necessarily 
and properly measured by weights, measures, or money, also 
duodecimallydivided ; so that parts of the one correspond to parts 
of the other. To measure or pay in decimals what is delivered 
in duodecimals, is not an easy or natural process ; although, apart 
from all consideration of what numerals are apphed to, and in 
more abstract operations with them, the decimal system is i!n- 
questionably the most easy and perfect to reckon by. To pay 
one hour's work, or two hours' work, of a day divided into twelve 
working hours, out of money divided duodecimaliy, is an easy 
process — or to measure the product of time and work by measures 
of quantity also duodecimaliy divided ; but to measure the same 
by decimal weights or measures, or pay for the work in decimally 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. S3 

divided money, is not a simple operation. It is time, in reality, 
which is the element bought and sold between man and man, if 
we resolve the value of productions to its base ; and unless time 
is divided decimally, which natural arrangement renders imprac- 
ticable, the decimal division cannot be generally adopted in ordi- 
nary affairs. It would be a retrograde step to measure all pro- 
duction in which time is the main element of value, by one scale, 
and to measure time itself by another. It may be arithmetically 
right, looking only to the abstract operations with the numerals, 
to adopt the decimal division ; but it would be philosophically 
\\^rong, looking at the nature of the things to which the numerals 
are to be applied. A great proportion of the food of mankind, 
also, is divided by nature duodecimally. The beasts of the field 
and birds of the air happen to have generally four, not five limbs; 
and the butcher, in spite of decimals, will divide, cut, and weigh 
his beef and mutton by quarters and halves, not by five-tenths or 
five-twentieths of the carcass. In many of the most necessary 
and perpetually recurring applications of weight, measure, time, 
labour, and money value, to natural objects duodecimally divided 
by nature, the decimal division is inconvenient, and therefore 
never will come into general use in France or anywhere else. 



CHAPTER III. 

SOCIAL ECONOMY — WHY NOT TREATED AS A DISTINCT SCIENCE.— 
ARISTOCRACY REPLACED BY FUNCTIONARISM IN FRANCE— IN GER- 
MANY. — INTERFERENCE OF GOVERNMENT WITH FREE AGENCY.— 
AMOUNT OF FUNCTIONARISM IN A FRENCH DEPARTMENT — INDRE 
ET LOIRE.— AMOUNT IN A SCOTCH COUNTY — SHIRE OF AYR.— EF- 
FECTS OF FUNCTIONARISM ON INDUSTRY— ON NATIONAL CHARAC- 
TER—ON MORALS— ON CIVIL AND POLITICAL LIBERTY.— CHANGE IN 
THE STATE OF PROPERTY IN PRUSSIA.— TWO ANTAGONIST PRINCI- 
PLES IN THE SOCIAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA, 

Social economy — the constmctioii of the social body of a 
country, the proportions in numbers and influence of the elements 
of which it is composed, the arrangements and institutions for 
the administration of its laws, police, and public business, civil, 
military, anjd ecclesiastical, and the principles on which all this 
social machinery should be constructed for working beneficially 
on the physical and moral condition of the people— is a science 
distinct from the sciences of government, legislation, jurisprudence, 
or political economy. These are but branches of social economy 
in its most extended meaning. It embraces all that affects social 
prosperity, and the* well-being, moral and physical, of the indi- 
viduals composing the social body of the country. Although its 
subjects are well defined, and its objects important, this science is 
rarely touched upon by philosophers. What we know of the 
social economy of any foreign country, we must gather from 
travels and statistical works. These give the materials, but not 
the principles ; the facts, but not the conclusions upon their causes 
or consequences. The political philosopher has never taken up 
these materials, or facts, and deduced from them the principles 
on which society ought to be constructed for attaining the highest 
moral and physical well-being of all its members. The cause 
of this neglect may be that in Germany, the prolific mother of 
theory and speculation, it might not be very safe to write or to 
lecture upon this science ; for a good social economy would imply 
social arrangements altogether adverse, both in principle and in 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 85 

operation, to the political power of the state over private free 
agency which is the basis of all social institutions in Germany. 
The mind, too, bred amidst these slavish institutions of Germany, 
is itself slavish. The political conceptions of the German mind, 
as expressed at least in writings or conversation, are, in general, 
either abject to the last degree, or extravagant to the last degree 
— the conceptions of slaves, or of slaves run mad ; both equally 
distant from the sober, rational speculations and conclusions of 
free men on the subject of their political and civil liberties. In 
England, no sudden overwhelming revolution in property and 
government, since the Norman conquest, has forced upon the 
country a total reconstruction of her social arrangements. The 
power of her legislature also to alter, amend, or enact laws, 
according to exigence or public opinion, and still more the nature 
of her jurisprudence, by which cases are decided and become 
landmarks in law, by the common sense of the age influencing 
courts and juries, and not, as in feudally constructed countries, 
by the rigid application of the principles of a code belonging to 
a different age and social condition, have removed the necessity 
of the English mind occupying itself with speculations upon the 
principles of the social arrangements of the country so generally, 
as upon the principles of its national wealth, of population, of 
pauperism, and of other branches of its political economy. The 
wants of society, as of the individual, are less felt, or less thought 
of, when the remedy is ready ; and its application is at all times 
in our power, and is even going on of itself in amending obvious 
defects in social arrangements. We are only beginning slowly, 
and piecemeal, to alter and improve our social arrangements for 
the administration and execution of law and public business, for 
police, for relief of destitution, for the health and education of the 
people ; and we advance from exigence to exigence as the occa- 
sion for interference arises, and not by a reference to, and a sud- 
den change in, any general principles or established practices. 

In France, new social arrangements were suddenly forced upon 
the country by the Revolution. The people were enthusiastic 
for changes in the old system ; and the new arrangements were 
formed suddenly, and induced suddenly over the face of the 
country, at a moment when military invasion or aggression, and 
civil disorder and anarchy, were to be apprehended and pro- 
vided against. The principle of military power, and of the hand 



86 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

of government being applied to everything, entered of necessity, 
at this crisis, into all the new social arrangements. Although these 
were sown and reared in the hot-bed of the warmest enthusiasm 
for liberty, equality, and the rights of man, and in the wildest 
moments of the Revolution, they have been found so well adapted 
to all the purposes of despotic government, that they have been 
transplanted from France into all the other Continental state§. It 
is not the least curious of the anomalies of modern times, that the 
whole internal social arrangements of La Repuhlique Francaise, 
for the administration of law, police, and civil and military affairs 
among her free citoyens, have been adopted by all the monarchi- 
cal and arbitrary states of Europe, as the most suitable machinery 
for their governments. The cause is the same. 

The abolition of an hereditary aristocracy in France, as an 
influential power in the social structure, threw each successive 
government, under whatever power or name, republican, con- 
sular, imperial, or monarchical, upon one principle for support — 
the influence of an extensive government patronage. It is the 
characteristic of the French mind to systematize, to carry out 
every principle to the utmost extreme of minuteness and subdi- 
vision. The new social arrangements for the administration of 
law, police, and public business, were carried at once to a minute- 
ness of efficiency and perfection, altogether inconsistent with the 
civil liberty or public spirit of a people. The extreme spirit of 
system, of interference in all things, of surveillance over all things, 
required a vast body of functionarism, a civil army of public 
officials among the people ; and this influence, both directly ef- 
fective, and indirectly, by the beneficial employments it affords, 
acting as bribes to the active and educated in every class, has 
been the basis of the social support of every government in France 
since the Revolution. 

In Germany the same cause has produced the same effect. 
The decline of aristocracy as an influential element in society, 
partly by the direct working of the Code Napoleon, and the 
partition or sale of the estates of the nobility, wher^ the French 
occupied the country, partly and chiefly by the general advance 
of the middle class in wealth, intelligence, independence, and 
influence over public opinion, has thrown all the Continental 
governments upon a similar support. Aristocracy is succeeded 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 87 

by functionarism as a state power, as a binding influence between 
the people and their governments in the social structure of Europe. 

This mechanization of all social duties in the hands of govern- 
ment is a demoralizing influence incompatible with the develop- 
ment of industry, free agency, or public spirit. England reduced 
at the peace her civil army of tax-gatherers and government 
functionaries, as well as her military. France kept up her ma- 
chinery of civil establishments. The arrangements adopted at an 
early period of the Revolution by the Directory have continued 
augmenting, rather than diminishing, under each successive go- 
vernment, and have silently spread over all the Continent; less, 
perhaps, from direct imitation or approval, than from the wants 
of all the Continental governments, during the war and since, 
having been the same — men and money ; and the same arrange- 
ments which were seen to be effective in France for raising men 
and money were adopted by her neighbours. The conscription, 
the passport system — the division of the country into departments, 
circles, cantons, and communes, each with its functionaries for 
civil, financial, and military affairs, — and the military organiza- 
tion of all classes of government functionaries, and the system 
of government interference and surveillance in all matters, are 
transferred from republican France to monarchical or despotic 
Germany, and appear to have been equally suitable to both. 

It is in France this system should be studied, as in France it 
arose. It is a shoot from her tree of liberty, which seems to find 
something very congenial to its nature in despotic soils. 
, France is divided into eighty-six departments, containing no 
less than 38,061 communes, or civil parishes, in each of which 
there is a local government functionary. Taking the population of 
France in 1838 at 33,540,903 individuals, each group of 176 fami- 
lies, or 881 souls, has one public functionary, exclusive of police- 
men, tax-gatherers, &c., among them, for administration or execu- 
tion of governmental business. Besides the inferior local function- 
aries, who are expectants upon higher places and emoluments, a 
group of communes forms a canton, a group of cantons an arron- 
dissement, a group of arrondissemcnts a department ; and each of 
these groups has its superintending and revising colleges of func- 
tionaries, for the administrative, executive, and financial duties. 

The great social problem of this age is, to what extent should 
the hand of government interfere in matters which directly or in- 



88 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

directly affect the public ? Should superintendence and surveil- 
lance be extended over all matters in which the public can by 
any possibility be affected ? or should all such matters be left 
entirely to private free agency and judgment ? government inter- 
position being the exception, not the rule, and exerted only in the 
rare cases in which private interests, acting against the public 
good, are unopposed by other private interests. The same ques- 
tion under another name is that of centralization in our social 
system in Britain, of the administration of law, police, and local 
business in which the whole community is interested, such as the 
charge of roads, of the poor, of education, of criminal prosecution 
— in the hands of the general government, and of its paid magis- 
trates and functionaries — or leaving them, as heretofore, in the 
hands, and under the management, of the people themselves. 

In this important question in social economy — upon the final 
and practical solution of which the future shape of society, and 
the amount of civil liberty enjoyed by the people of Europe 
mainly depend, the English nation stands at one end of the line, 
with their descendants on the American continent, and France 
and Prussia, with all the imitative German states, at the other. 
We understand, more or less, our own social economy in Great 
Britain, and the general principle of non-interference of govern- 
ment, unless in rare exceptive cases, on which it rests; but we 
are generally ignorant of the social economy of the Continent, of 
the amount of government interference and superintendence car- 
ried into affairs which are conducted, with us, by the private in- 
terests, or public spirit of individuals, and of the effects on the 
industry, civil liberty, and moral condition of the people, by the 
limitation of individual free-agency, and the intermixture of 
government functionarism in all the acts and duties of private 
life. Every traveller is struck with the numbers and military 
organization of the civil functionaries in the pay of government, 
whom he meets at every step on the Continent. It is perhaps 
•the first feature in the different social economy of those countries 
which attracts his notice ; but no traveller has given us any view 
of the amount, or any speculations on the social effects of this 
widely-spread functionarism. 

I shall endeavour to point out the numbers of government 
functionaries in a given population in France, in order to obtain 
an approximation, at least, to the amount of this power in their 
social economy. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 89 

In 1830, the population of France is stated at 31,851,545 souls, 
which would give an average of 370,367 souls in each depart- 
ment. The chief towns of the 86 departments, that is, the towns 
in which the departmental courts and establishments are seated, 
contain together 2,273,939 souls, which allows on an average a 
population of 26,441 souls to each chief town. Now, looking for 
an average department, and one which could be easily compared 
with one of our counties, I find the department of the Indre et 
Loire, containing 290,160 souls, and its chief town, Tours, 23,100 
souls, as near an average as any; and it has the advantage, for 
comparison, that at the same period, 1830, the shire of Ayr was 
in population as nearly equal to one-half of the population of the 
department of the Indre et Loire as we can expect ; viz., the popu- 
lation of the county of Ayr was, according to the population re- 
turns, 145,055 souls, and of the county town, 11,626 souls, being 
also, as nearly as we can expect, one-half of the population of 
Tours, the chief town of the Indre et Loire. I take these two 
groups of populations, therefore, in preference to others. Now, 
what number of public functionaries are employed by the French 
government in the civil affairs of the 290,160 people inhabiting 
the department of the Indre et Loire ? 

This department is divided into three arrondissemens — so is 
the shire of Ayr into three districts, Carrick, Kyle, and Cunning- 
ham; the three arrondissemens are further divided into 25 can- 
tons, and the 25 cantons into 292 communes, or civil parishes ; 
the sliire of Ayr, if I mistake not, reckons 46 parishes. In each 
of these 292 communes, are a mayor, adjunct, and municipal 
council. The mayor presides over the public business ; the ad- 
junct acts as public prosecutor before the primary or lower local 
courts. But as the mayor and municipal council, and perhaps 
the adjunct, are not, I believe, oflices paid by, although confirmed 
by, government, but held by candidates expectant on the higher 
and paid offices, I do not reckon them, amounting to 584 persons, 
among the functionaries living in government pay and service ; 
although, in as far as they are candidates for higher civil office, 
and depend on government for their future means of living, their 
influence on the social economy of the people is much the same 
as that of the classes of paid civil functionaries. Each of the 25 
cantons has a primary local court composed of 5 paid function- 
aries, making in all of paid officials 125. Each of the three ar- 
7 



90 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

rondissemens is provided with an upper court, with 10 paid offi- 
cials, and that of the chief town with 20, clerks, officers, &c., 
included, in all 40. Thus for the administration of justice there 
are 165 persons who are paid functionaries, divided into 25 
primary local courts, and 3 superior courts, for the civil and 
criminal business of a population just about double of that of the 
shire of Ayr. For the collection of the government taxes in the 
department of the Indre et Loire, the amount of functionarism is — 
Eeceivers of taxes - - ■ - - - - - 68 

Inspectors, stamp masters, registrars ----- 37 

Directors and controllers of land tax - - ' - - - 1 

Measurers of land for land tax ----- 12 

Receivers of indirect taxes . - - - - - 23 

Receiver-general ------- i 

Treasurer -------- i 

Persons in offices connected vv^ith receipt of taxes, in all, functionaries 152 

For the general government of this little imperium in imperio 
of a department, we have, moreover : 

Monsieur le Prefet - - - - - - . - 1 

Sous-prefets, one to each arrondissement - - - - 3 

Council of the Prefet - 3 

Chiefs of bureaux -.-.--. 6 

Keepers of archives ------- 2 

Officers of roads, bridges and mines - - - - - 6 

Officers of woods and waters ------ 6 

Officers of weights and measures ----- 3 

Officers of affairs of the mint ------ 3 

Officers of the national lottery ------ 2 

Officers of the post-office - - - - - - 26 



Being 15 paid functionaries for general government, and 45 paid 
functionaries for different branches of public business, which 
government chooses to centralize in its own management. 

The grand total of fiuictionarism in a district of about double 
of the population of the county of Ayr, is: 

Paid functionaries connected with the administration of law - 165 

Paid functionaries connected with receipt of taxes - - • 152 

Paid functionaries for general government - - - 15 

Paid functionaries for other government business - - 46 

Paid functionaries, in all, for a population of 290,160 souls - 378 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 91 

and this is exclusive of the establishment of the doiiane, or cus- 
tom-house, which in the frontier provinces has very numerous 
establishments, and even forms a regular military cordon, on duty 
night and day, and exclusive of the whole executive police, or 
gendarmerie, who patrol the roads, and have posts all over the 
country, and exclusive of the whole establishments for the con- 
script system, and its necessary accompaniment, the passport sys- 
tem, which give employment to an army of clerks and function- 
aries in the bureaux in every town, and exclusive also of the 
whole educational establishment of which the patronage is in the 
hands of government. Monsieur de Tocqueville reckons the 
total amount of functionarism in France, that is, of civil appoint- 
ments under government, at 138,000 offices, costing yearly 200 
millions of francs. Taking the population of 1830 at 31,851,545 
souls, this gives one paid functionary to every 230 persons. But 
this does not ^ive a just view of the influence and extent of the 
principle of functionarism in the social economy of France. The 
functionary is an adult male, with fixed income, and is, therefore, 
either a head of a family, or in a social position equivalent to the 
head of a family; and the figures of the population represent the 
infants, aged, infirm, and females, as well as the effective adult 
male members of the community. In a just view of the propor- 
tion of functionarism in the social economy of France, one family 
in every 46 lives by functionarism, and at the public expense ; 
there is one functionary family for every 46 families of the people. 
Now, let us reckon the amount of functionarism in the Scotch 
county of Ayr, containing, as nearly as possible, one half of the 
population of the French department of the Indre et Loire. A 
Scotch county is selected in preference to an English, because, in 
Scotland, the feudal law, and feudal arrangements of society, are 
similar in principle to those which prevailed on the continent 
before the changes in social economy produced by the French 
Revolution ; but to the social economy of England, in which the 
administration of law, the police of the country, the roads, the 
public business of every kind, are under the management of the 
people themselves, and not of the general government of the 
country, nothing analogous exists or ever existed on the continent, 
no social arrangements whatsoever similar in principle. In tiic 
English county of Suflblk, for instance, containing 296,317 souls, 
being GS57 more than the population of the French department 



92 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

of the Indre et Loire, excepting in the post-office department, and 
those of the excise, customs and stamps, no pubUc functionaries, 
or very few, not perhaps in all half-a-dozen, could be pointed 
out who live by paid offices to which they are appointed by the 
government. The unpaid magistracy, the unpaid constables, the 
unpaid sheriffs, lord-lieutenants, &c., do all the duties which the 
host of functionaries in France, living upon the public in the pro- 
portion of one family in every 46, do in this French department. 
Person and property are not less safe, criminal offence not more 
common in Suffolk, than in this French department of equal 
population. The moral effects, therefore, of each system on the 
habits and minds of the people must be compared, before judg- 
ment is given for or against either system : that of interference, 
centraUzation, and surveillance by government, as in the French 
system ; and that of non-interference, and leaving all to be done 
by the people, as well as for the people, in social business, as in 
the English. 

But to return to the shire of Ayr. For the administration of 
law in civil and criminal affairs there are of paid functionaries : 

The sheriff depute, the equivalent to the prefet as an organ of 
the executive government, and with his resident substitute, the 
procurator fiscal, and the sheriff clerk with 3 deputies, the equiva- 
lent of the 165 functionaries living by the administration of law 
in the French department ; being 7 persons in judicial functions. 

In the collection of taxes in this county, the amount of func- 
tionarism appears to be : 

Collector of taxes, surveyor, collector of county rates - ■■ - 3 

Distributor of stamps --..... i 

Collector and comptroller of customs ----- 2 

Excise officers, collector, clerk and supervisors - - - - 8 
Postmasters living entirely on salary of office, suppose one in each town 

or village, in which sheriff or justice of peace courts are held - 7 

21 

The whole functionaries living by offices under government in 
the collection of taxes, do not certainly exceed from 21 to 25 
persons, and this number is the equivalent for 153 functionaries 
in a department of only double the population. Instead of 21 
persons, the Scotch county would, on the French system of func- 
tionarism, have 76 persons living by public employment in the 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 93 

financial department of its business. To cover all possible omis- 
sions in this list of 21 public functionaries in a Scotch county, as 
from the mixed nature of their means of living it would be diffi- 
cult to determine exactly who live entirely by public employment, 
and who live principally by the exercise of other trades or pro- 
fessions, but having some office, as postmasters, also, we shall 
state them at from 30 to 35 individuals ; and this number certainly 
does cover all persons having their livings in a Scotch county, by- 
public function in the administration of law, finance and civil 
government, which in a French department gives offices and 
livings to 378 paid functionaries. In the ratio of the population, 
189 paid functionaries in France live upon the public, by doing 
the duties which, at the utmost, from 30 to 35 paid functionaries 
live by doing in Scotland. 

The effects upon the social condition of a people of the two dis- 
tinct principles — that of doing everything for the people by paid 
functionaries, and government management, in a system of per- 
fect centralization — and that of doing everything for the people 
by the people themselves, and with as little as possible of govern- 
ment agency — have never been satisfactorily examined by our 
political philosophers. We have tirades enough against the abuse 
of power in the hands of the unpaid magistracy of England, and 
examples enough of the abuse ; but we have no impartial judg- 
ment given on the advantages and disadvantages of the system, 
compared to that of a paid body of judicial functionaries. Lord 
Brougham has frequently insisted on the great social benefit of 
bringing cheap law and justice home to every man's fireside ; but 
that great political philosopher has never stated what this cheap 
law and justice would cost. The financial cost is not the principal 
or important cost in a system of extensive functionarism, but the 
moral cost, the deteriorating influence of the system on the indus- 
try, habits, and moral condition of the people. Wc see a tendency 
in our most enlightened and liberal statesmen — which is only held 
in check by the financial cost of indulging it — to centralize in the 
hands of government much of the public business, the local magis- 
tracy and police, the prosecution of ofl'ences, the care of the poor, 
the support of high roads, the education of the people, instead of 
leaving these duties to be, as heretofore, performed by the people 
for themselves. 

A few of the effects of the functionarism which necessarily 



94 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

overspreads these countries in which governments do what it 
should be left to the public spirit or the necessity of the people to 
do for themselves, are sufficiently visible, and may assist in solving 
the question. 

All this subsistence in the field of government employment 
paralyzes exertion in the field of private industry. This is an 
effect which the most unobserving traveller on the Continent re- 
marks. The young, the aspiring, the clever, and the small capi- 
talists in particular, look for success in life to government employ- 
ment, to public function, not to their own activity and industry in 
productive pursuits. With us, civil or military employment under 
government is scarcely seen, is nothing in the vast field of employ- 
ment which professional, commercial, or manufacturing industry 
throws open to all. Abroad, all other employments are as nothing 
in extent, advantage, social importance, and influence, compared 
to employment under government. Functionarism has, in its 
effects on the industry and wealth of nations, replaced the mo- 
nastic and overgrown clerical establishments of the middle ages. 
It was not the vast wealth of the Roman Catholic Church, and 
of its convents, monasteries, and other establishments, that was 
detrimental to the national wealth and prosperity of a country. 
These were but an additional wheel in the social machine. All 
that was received was again expended; and whether a bishop or 
a duke, an abbot, or an earl, received and expended the income 
derived from the same acres, could make no diflerence in national 
wealth. As receivers and expenders, the clerical were perhaps 
better than the aristocratical land-owners, because they understood 
husbandry better, and expended their revenues in peace, in their 
own fixed localities, by which a middle class beneath them was 
enabled to grow up. Still less was it, as Voltaire and the political 
economists of his days imagined, the celibacy of so many idle 
monks, and nuns, and clergy, and the want of population by their 
celibacy, that were injurious to the prosperity of Catholic countries. 
The celibacy of the Popish clergy is in no other way injurious to 
a nation than that a single man can live upon less than a man with 
a family, and that consequently many more individuals can obtain 
a living in an unproductive profession, as the clerical (considered 
economically) is, from the same amount of church revenue, than 
if all in the profession were married. Our church extensionists 
ought, in consistency, to advocate the celibacy of the clerical order 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 95 

among us, because the same revenues of the church — either of the 
Church of England, or of the Church of Scotland — would thereby 
support three times the number of effective clergy, and in equal 
comfort; the expense of a family being at least three times greater on 
an average than that of a single man, and it is church endowments, 
and not the mere dead stone and lime work of buildings, that are 
necessary in true and effective church extension. But it was 
neither the wealth, nor the numbers, nor the celibacy of the Po- 
pish clergy, that made them in the middle ages, and make them 
at this day in all Catholic lands, detrimental to national wealth and 
prosperity. It was, and is, the amount of easy living, of social 
importance and influence, which the clerical employment offered, 
and which naturally turned, exactly as functionarism on the Con- 
tinent does at present, all the youth of abilities, and with small 
capitals to defray the expense of education, to a clerical living 
instead of to industrial pursuits. We see even in Scotland, in re- 
mote parts, that the ease with which, during the last war, clerical 
students could accomplish the Httle that country presbyteries re- 
quired in studies at the university, and could slip into a kirk, turned 
away from the broad paths of worldly industry many who ought 
to have been sitting behind the loom, or the desk, and whose talent 
extended just to finding out and securing a good pulpit-hvelihood. 
Abroad, the employment under government, in the present age, 
attracts to it, as the Church of Rome did in the middle ages, all 
the mind, industry, and capital of the middle classes, on whom 
the wealth and prosperity of a country are founded. The little 
capitals stored up in those classes are saved, not to put out their 
^i-oung men, as with us, into various industrial pursuits, and with 
suitable means to carry them on, or to extend the original branch 
of business in which the family capital was acquired, but to sup- 
port their sons while studying, and waiting for a hving by public 
function in some of the numerous departments of government 
employment. It may be reasonably doubted if tiie Popish church, 
in the darkest period of the middle ages, abstracted so many peo- 
ple, and so much capital from the paths and employments of pro- 
ductive industry, as the civil and military establishments of the 
continental governments do at the j)rcsent day in France and 
Germany. The means also of obtaining a livelihood in monkish 
or clerical function were less demoralizing to the public mind and 
spirit; for some kind of intellectual superiority, or self-denial, or 



96 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

sacrifice, was required, and not merely, as in fimctionarism, bare- 
faced patronage. 

National character partakes of the spirit which the main object 
of pursuits among a people produces in individuals. It is at the 
hand of government, by favour and patronage, and through sub- 
servience to those in higher function, that the youth of the Conti- 
nent look for bread and future advancement. All independence 
of mind is crushed, all independent action and public spirit buried 
under the mass of subsistence, social influence and honours, to be 
obtained in the civil and military functions under government on 
the Continent. It is to be observed, that, in time of peace, the 
military service in most foreign countries is scarcely different from 
the civil. Having no distant colonies to garrison, no posts in un- 
wholesome climates to occupy, no perpetual rotation at home from 
one quarter to another, but being generally stationed for many 
years in the same towns, the military act upon the industry of 
the country in the same way, and with the same effects, as the 
body of civil functionaries. Both together form a mass of subsist- 
ence, influence, and distinction to be attained by other means than 
productive industry, and which smothers all exertion and spirit 
of independence in the industrial classes. The sturdy-minded 
English industrialist toils and slaves at his trade, to become some 
day an independent man, to be beholden to no one, to be master 
of his own time and actions, to be a free agent individually, acting 
and thinking for himself, both in his private, and, if he has any, 
in his public capacity, or business. To this end he brings up his 
sons, and puts them out in the world with a trade, and with 
capital, if he has any, to attain this end. The dependence upon 
others for a living, the subserviency and seeking for favour, inher- 
ent in a functionary career, do not come within his sphere of 
action. A living by productive industry is, generally speaking, 
far more certain, and more easily obtained in our social system, 
in which military, clerical, and legal functions under government 
patronage, and a living in either of those branches of public em- 
ployment, are rare, and altogether out of reach and out of sight 
of the middle classes in general, forming no object to the great 
mass of the industrialists-class to breed up their sons to. This 
is the great moral basis on which the national wealth, industry, 
and character of the English people rest ; and is the only basis 
which can uphold real liberty in a country, or a social state in 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 97 

which civil Uberty as well as political, free agency in private life 
as well as free constitutional forms of government, can exist. The 
Germans and French never can be free people, nor very industri- 
ous, very wealthy nations, with their present social economy — 
with their armies of functionaries in civil employments, extending 
the desire and the means among the classes who ought to rely 
upon their own independent industry in the paths of trade and 
manufacture, of earning a living in public function by other means 
than their own productive industry. This universal dependence 
upon public function smothers at the root the growth of independ- 
ent feeling, action, and industry. 

Political liberty, the forms of a liberal legislative constitution, 
the Continent may obtain ; and France has obtained such a con- 
stitution as always opposes a considerable, and often a successful 
check to the measures of the executive : yet with all this real 
political liberty, the French people have as yet no real civil 
liberty, and in consequence of the general diffusion of the spirit 
of functionarism through society, no idea of, or feeling for civil 
liberty. The private rights of individuals as members of the 
social union are every hour infringed upon by their social insti- 
tutions in a way which individuals with any just feeling of inde- 
pendence and civil liberty, and with political liberty to give effect 
and reality to their sentiments, would never submit to. As an 
instance of the state of the public mind in France, and indeed all 
over the Continent, on the rights and civil liberty of the individual 
members of society, ic is matter of leave and license, of passport 
and police regulation, for the native Frenchman or German to 
move from place to place, or to exercise in many countries any 
kind of trade, profession, or means of living, within his own 
native land. The very elector, going from Paris to his own home, 
to exercise perhaps the highest privilege of political liberty — his 
elective franchise, in voting for a representative to the chamber 
of deputies — has so little civil liberty, and so little idea of it, that 
he must apply for and travel with a passport asked from and 
signed by a government functionary. This is a caricature of 
liberty. It is liberty in chains, her charter in her hand, her paper 
cap of liberty on her head, and manacles on her feet. 

The German populations have not even attained this state. 
They are without political liberty, as well as civil liberty. 

The police of the country, the security of person and property, 



98 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

are, it is alleged, better provided for by this governmental sur- 
veillance over and interference in all individual movement. The 
same argument would justify the locking up the population every 
night in public gaols. Good police, and the security of person 
and property, however valuable in society, are far too dearly 
paid for by the sacrifice of private free agency involved in this 
ultra-precautionary social economy. The moral sense of right, 
and the individual independence of judgment in conduct, are 
superseded by this conventional duty of obedience to office. Men 
lose the sentiment of what is due to themselves by others, and to 
others by themselves ; and lose the sense of moral rectitude, and 
the habit of applying it to actions. A Frenchman or German 
would not think himself entitled to act upon his own judgment 
and sense of right, and refuse obedience to an order of a supe- 
rior, if it were morally wrong ; nor would the public feeling, as 
in England, go along with, and justify the individual who, on his 
own sense of right and wrong, refused to be an instrument of, or 
party to, any act not approved of by his moral sense. The 
spirit of subordination and implicit obedience, which we isolate 
and confine entirely to military service, enters on the Continent 
into civil life. The scenes of bloodshed in France under the 
revolutionary government, could never have taken place among 
a people bred up in habits of moral free agency, and of reflecting 
independence of individual judgment on action. The instru- 
ments would have been wanting in the tribunals. The general 
moral sense would have opposed the enactment or fulfilment of 
such decrees. 

The non-interference of government in our social economy 
with individual free-agency, and the intense repugnance and 
opposition to every attempt at such interference with the indi- 
vidual's rights of thinking and acting, have developed a more 
independent movement of the moral sense among the English 
people than among the continental. It is their distinguished na- 
tional characteristic. The individual Englishman, the most rude 
and uncivilized in manners, the most depraved in habits, the most 
ignorant in reading, writing, and rehgious knowledge ; standing 
but too often lower than the lowest of other nations on all these 
points; will yet be found a man wonderfully distinct, and far 
above the educated continental man of a much higher class, in 
his moral discrimination of the right or wrong in human action, 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 99 

far more decidedly aware of his civil rights as a member of so- 
ciety, and judging far more acutely of what he terms fair play, 
or of what is due to himself, and by himself, in all pubhc or 
private relations or actions. It is the total absence of government 
interference, by superintendence and functionaries, in the stream 
of private activity and industry, that has developed, in a remark- 
able degree, this spirit of self-government, and the influence of 
the moral sense on action among the English. It is their educa- 
tion. We may call them uneducated, because they cannot read 
and write so generally as the Scotch, the French, or the Prussian 
people ; but as men and citizens they have received a practical 
education, from the nature of their social arrangements, of a far 
higher kind and value than the French, the Prussian, or even the 
Scotch can lay claim to. They -are far more independent moral 
agents in public and private affairs. 

In France and Prussia, the state, by the system of functionarism, 
stepped into the shoes of the feudal baron on the abolition of the 
feudal system ; and he who was the vassal, and now calls him- 
self the citizen, is, in fact, as much restrained in his civil liberty, 
and free agency, as a moral, self-acting member of society, by state 
enactments, superfluous legislation, and the government spirit of 
intermeddling by its functionaries in all things, as he was before 
by his feudal lords. The physical condition of the people of those 
countries has, beyond all doubt, been improved by the general 
diffusion of property through the social mass, and has advanced 
to a higher state of well-being and comfort than with us ; but 
their civil and moral condition has not kept pace and advanced 
with it. They have the property, but their governments endea- 
vour to retain the privileges which belong to property, the rights 
of individual free agency in the moral and industrial use of it. 
These are two antagonist powers in the social economy of the 
Continent. An unseen power called the state is held now, as it 
was in the most stringent days of the feudal system, to be the 
owner of all the materials of human industry, of all occupations, 
trades, and professions, of human industry itself, of all the deeds 
and thoughts of each individual, of his body and soul, it may be 
truly said ; for instead of being free to do what law does not 
prohibit, he can do nothing lawfully but what law permits. 
He cannot engage in the simplest act of a free agent in civil 
society without leave and license, and being in some shape or 



100 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

Other under the eye and regulation of this unseen proprietor of 
all earthly. He may, as in France, enjoy a considerable share of 
political hberty that is of a constitutional voice in the enactment 
of laws ; but civil liberty, the uncontrolled freedom of action, and 
of the use of property, of body, and of mind, subject only to the 
most obvious and urgent necessity of interference by government 
to prevent evil to others — is as little enjoyed by him in the con- 
stitutional as in the despotic state ; as little in Belgium or France, 
as in Prussia or Austria. The same principle of intrusion on the 
civil liberty of the subject pervades the social economy of all 
these states — interference is the rule, non-interference the excep- 
tion. Yet of what value is political liberty, or a representative 
legislature, but to give and secure to every man the full and free 
enjoyment of his civil liberty ? A free constitution is but a plat- 
form for political adventurers to declaim from, if it does not bring 
civil liberty into the social economy of a country. 

The just conclusion is, that mere changes in the forms of go- 
vernment, and in the machinery and forms of legislation, will not 
suddenly, and as a necessary consequence, change the spirit of 
the people, and that in genuine liberty, in practical civil liberty, 
in the individual freedom of action and of mind, and the influ- 
ences of this freedom on moral, intellectual, and national charac- 
ter, the people of the Continent are but little more advanced now 
than they were under Frederic the Great, or Louis XIV", or 
Napoleon. They are still slaves in the spirit and principles of 
their social economy. What they understand by liberty, and are 
clamorous for, is political liberty, not civil liberty, the instrument 
of liberty without its use, the outward forms without the spirit in 
their social economy. 

But this is not always to be so. This is but the transition state 
of society just casting off the net-work of slavery in which the 
feudal system had for ages enveloped it. The vassal is now the 
proprietor, and in France at least more or less the legislator him- 
self. It is his mind that is behind his social position. He is 
a proprietor without knowing the rights of property. The old 
feudal spirit still hngers in the regenerated governments and 
people ; but the seed is sown, the leaven is working. Property 
will gradually take its own place, and assume its own rights in 
social affairs. It has been widely diffused by the effects of the 
French Revolution throuffh all ranks and classes of the social 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 101 

body of France and Germany. It is not merely property in land, 
but also personal property, capital, that has been spread among 
the people, and a spirit of industry, a feeling of individual inde- 
pendence, naturally accompanied this ditTusion of property. But 
the rights inseparable from industry and property — free-agency, 
the uncontrolled use and exercise of them — are retained by go- 
vernment as a basis for the support of kingly, power. The prin- 
ciple of government when land was almost the only influential 
property in society, and that was in the hands of a small privileged 
class deeply interested in the support of the source from which 
they derived their property and privileges, and held them exclu- 
sively, is transferred to a social state, in which land is in the hands 
of all, and no one class has any exclusive interests or rights, de- 
rived from the crown and connected with lands, to maintain. 
Owing to the natural and unextinguishable influences of property 
on the human mind, this can only do, either in France or Ger- 
many, until the public mind becomes educated and elevated up 
to its social position, and along with the physical enjoyment and 
possession of property, claims also all that morally and politically 
belongs to the enjoyment and possession of property, viz. : free 
agency as individuals, self-government by representative constitu- 
tions as citizens. It is evident that one and the same principle as 
a support of uncontrolled kingly power, cannot be found equally 
efl'ective in two such totally distinct combinations of society, as 
that of all land being concentrated in the hands of a small privi- 
leged class closely connected by every tie and motive with the 
crown, and that of the general diff"usion of land among a popula- 
tion quite unconnected with it. The very fiction of law of the 
crown being the source from which the landed proprietor derives 
his rights, falls to the ground where the right is almost universal, 
and conveys no conventional privilege attached to such property, 
and where succession by primogeniture is abolished. The crown 
attempting to retain restrictions on the use and free enjoyment of 
property after it has lost all connection with it, is in a false position. 
Two distinct powers in society— the power of property and 
the kingly power— have thus, by the great convulsion of the 
French Revolution, been placed in a state of incompatible co-exist- 
ence. They are two antagonist powers in the social economy of 
France, Prussia, and Northern Germany, two powers in oppo- 
sition to, not in unison with each other. The rights of property, 



102 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

the free agency of the possessor in the use and application of it, 
the moral free agency of the individuals possessing it, their self- 
government and self-management of all that affects it, are natural 
prerogatives of the possessors of property which, where a whole 
nation are the proprietors, cannot be usurped to support, by dint 
of an unnatural system of functionarism extending over the pre- 
rogatives of property and the private rights of proprietors, a royal 
autocratic power of the community that has no exclusive rights 
or privileges now to bestow upon any class of proprietors. Such 
an usurpation of the rights of property, and of the natural pre- 
rogatives of proprietors, by the intrusion of functionarism into all 
the social relations, affairs, duties, and industrial movement of a 
people of proprietors, can be no stable or very long endured 
arrangement of the social economy of a country. What is the 
jarring between the monarch and the states in Hanover? What 
are the petitions for a constitutional representation to the new 
sovereign of Prussia from the most important towns in his do- 
minions? What is that great national movement, the German 
commercial league, but the efforts of property to obtain its natural 
rights in society — the distant sounds that precede a storm? 

When this usurpation of the rights of property in the social 
economy of the Continent is removed, either by gradual steps or 
by sudden convulsion, on what has kingly power to rest? A 
monarchical government and a democratical distribution of the 
landed and other property cannot exist together. They are an- 
tagonist elements in social economy. 

The French Revolution, considered as the beginning of a radi- 
cal, inevitable, and beneficial change in the physical, moral, and 
political condition of the European people, must be regarded by 
the social economist as a movement only in its commencement. 
It has left the continental population in two very distinctly marked 
divisions. The one consists of the populations in which, with a 
few modifications and reforms not affecting the grand principle 
of their social economy, the old feudal arrangements of property, 
and the aristocratic basis of kingly power raised upon feudality, 
are retained. Austria is undoubtedly at the head of this division. 
The other consists of the populations which have adopted a new 
social economy in which the two corner-stones of feudality, pri- 
mogeniture and hereditary privilege, are taken away, and kingly 
power has only the temporary basis of functionarism for its sup- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 103 

port. France is at the head of this division. The diffusion of 
property, the abohtion of privilege and primogeniture, and the 
introduction of functionarism as a substitute for aristocracy and 
a basis for the support of government, are all derived from the 
French Revolution ; and Prussia entered voluntarily into the cir- 
cle of the new social economy of this division, mider the adminis- 
tration of Prince Hardenberg, in 1809. 

It was found necessary, if Prussia was to preserve a national 
existence, to give the mass of the population that interest in the 
defence of the country which was totally wanting under the feu- 
dal distribution of the land into noble estates cultivated by the 
forced labour of serfs. The following sketch will explain im- 
perfectly the amount of change in the state of landed property 
in Prussia produced by this measure. 

Previous to 1800 landed property was, on the greater part of 
the Continent, divided into noble or baronial, and peasant, rotu- 
rier, or not noble holdings. The former class of estates coidd 
only be held by nobility, and had many unjust exemptions from 
public burdens, and many oppressive privileges attached to them. 
These baronial estates, by far the greatest in extent, had the 
peasantry who were born on the land adscripti glebx ; had a 
right to their labour every day for the cultivation of the domain ; 
had civil and criminal jurisdiction over them in the baronial court 
of the estate ; had a baronial judge, a baronial prison on the estate 
to incarcerate them, and a bailiff to flog them for neglect of work 
or other baronial offences. These slaves were allowed cottages 
with land upon the outskirts of the estate, and cultivated their 
own patches in the hours or days when their labour was not 
required on the barony lands. They paid tithes and dues out of 
their crops to the minister, the surgeon, the schoolmaster, and the 
barony or local judge who resided on the estate, and was ap- 
pointed by the proprietor, as patron both of the church and of 
the court of the barony, but out of the number of examined 
jurists, or students of law, who were candidates for these local 
judgeships. 

This is, for the system is not abolished altogether, the ^reat 
object of the numerous body of law students at the German 
universities. The local judge is, like the minister, with a fixed 
and comfortable salary not depending on the will of the patron, 
and he is a servant of the state revised by, and reporting to, the 



104 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

higher local judicatories, and with promotion open to him from 
the local baronial to the higher courts of the country. 

If the serf deserted, he was brought back by the military, who 
patrolled the roads for the purpose of preventing the escape of 
peasants into the free towns, their only secure asylum, and was 
imprisoned, fed on bread and water in the black hole, which 
existed on every baronial estate, and flogged. The condition of 
these born serfs was very similar to that of the negro slaves on a 
West India estate during the apprenticeship term, before their 
final emancipation. This system was in full vigour up to the 
beginning of the present century, and not merely in remote un- 
frequented corners of the Continent, but in the centre of her 
civilization — all round Hamburgh and Lubeck, for instance, in 
Holstein, Schleswig, Hanover, Brunswick, and over all Prussia. 
Besides these baronial estates with the born-serfs attached to 
them, there were Bauern Hofe, or peasant estates, which held 
generally of some baron, but were distinct properties, paying as 
feu duties or quit-rents so many days' labour in the week, with 
other feudal services and payments to the feudal superior. The 
acknowledgment of these as distinct legal properties not to be 
recalled so long as the peasant performed the services and pay- 
ments established either by usage or by writings, was the first 
great step in Prussia towards the change in the condition of the 
peasantry. It was stretched so far as to include the serfs located 
on the outskirts of the barony, and paying daily labour for their 
patches of land, and who originally were intended by the pro- 
prietor to be his servants and day-labourers for cultivating his 
mains or home-farmed land, but who, by long usage and occupa- 
tion for generations, had become a kind of hereditary tenants not 
to be distinguished from those occupants acknowledged to be pro- 
prietors, or what we would call copyholders. Prince Hardenberg's 
energetic administration made all these occupants the absolute 
proprietors of their several holdings, for the yearly payment of 
the quit rents they had been paying to the baronial proprietor, 
and had these quit rents, whether paid in labour or other services, 
or ingrain, valued by commissioners at fixed moderate rates, and 
had them commuted and brought up from the dominant property, 
under inspection of the commissioners, by the surrender to it of a 
portion of the land of the servient property, if the peasant had 
no money for the purchase of the redemption. This great and 



NOTES OK A TRAVELLER. 105 

good measure, which was projected and carried into effect by 
Stein- and Hardenberg in a succession of edicts, from that of 
October 9, 1S07, up to June 7, 1821, is the great and redeeming 
glory of the reign of Frederic-William III, and, like all great 
and good measures, was accomplished with much less difficulty 
than was anticipated. Feudality had become effete. A strong 
and vigorous exertion was necessary to give the people some- 
thing to defend — some material interest in the country. 13y this 
measure, Prussia was at once covered with a numerous body of 
small proprietors, instead of being held by a small privileged class 
of nobility. 

This revolution in the state of property was almost as great as 
that which had taken place in France, and it is pregnant with the 
same results and tendencies. It gave comfort, well-being, pro- 
perty, to a population of serfs. It emancipated them from local 
oppression, raised their moral and physical condition, gave them 
a political, although as yet unacknowledged existence, as the most 
important constituent element of the social body. But here the 
Prussian Revolution has stopped short of the French. It gave no 
political liberty or influence under any form, no representative 
constitution to those to whom it had given clear and distinct pro- 
perty, and consequently the feelings, influences on the human 
mind, and the requirements which the possession of property 
brings along with it. The people hold the property, and the 
crown, by its system of functionarism and military organization, 
endeavours to hold all the rights and prerogatives belonging to, 
and morally and civilly essential to property, all the civil and 
political liberties of the proprietors of the country. 

As a necessary sequence of the emancipation of the country 
population from feudal services to the noble land-owner, the town 
populations were emancipated from the restrictions and privileges 
of their feudal lords, viz.: the incorporation of trades and bur- 
gesses. Every man was entitled to be admitted to the rights of 
burgess or citizen on paying a certain fixed sum (in Berlin it is 
thirty thalers) for his burgess ticket, and is entitled, whether he 
has or has not served an apprenticeship, to exercise any calling 
or trade. This second step completed the change in the social 
economy of Prussia, and altogether obliterated its former cliarac- 
ter of feudality as far as regarded the people, although the govern- 
ment still clings to the feudal principle of autocracy, without any 
8 



106 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

representation of the proprietors of the country. If these were 
small privileged classes of nobility, and incorporated bodies, inter- 
woven with royalty, as under the old feudal arrangements of 
society, and kept by exclusive privileges and distinctions apart 
from the main body of a people, and closely united to each other 
and to the crown by every tie of interest and honour, this order 
of things might, although opposed to the spirit of the times, and 
to the gradual but great advance of society in an opposite direc- 
tion, linger on, as in Austria and other feudally constituted coun- 
tries, in a feeble existence, waiting the blast that is to overturn it. 
But in a whole nation of proprietors, it is a false social economy 
— an order of things too unnatural to be stable. 

In France, the body of proprietors possessing the land of the 
country have obtained a portion, at least, of political liberty, a re- 
presentation, by a part at least, of their own body in the legislature, 
and. may, without any very violent convulsion, give themselves 
hereafter the civil hberty they still want, in proportion as the 
public mind becomes prepared to cast off the trammels on indi- 
vidual liberty and free agency imposed by functionarism and 
government interference. Prussia has not taken this step, and is 
now in the false position of holding fast by a power which has 
no roots in the new social economy she has adopted. The govern- 
ment has cast loose the absolute kingly power from its sheet- 
anchor, the feudal system, and is now clinging to the twig of 
functionarism to save itself from being hurried along with the 
stream of social improvement. 

France and Prussia should be viewed by the social economist 
consecutively. They have the same two antagonist principles in 
their social economy, although in France the ultimate predomi- 
nance of the power of property over absolute kingly power is no 
longer doubtful. Functionarism in France, enormous as it is, will 
be broken down as a state element for the support of kingly 
power, by the element of popular power in the constitution, the 
Chamber of Deputies. But in Prussia the people have no shadow 
even of legislative power, no kind of representative chamber, and 
are abjectly patient under the total want of civil and political 
liberty. Property, and a prodigious social reform, have been 
thrust upon them by their government in a kind of speculation 
on improvement, rather than attained by any invincible desire of 
their own, or by any national struggle for their ameliorated social 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 107 

condition. All has been clone for them, not by them; and they 
enjoy the physical good this change has brought them, like a body 
of emancipated slaves who receive their own natural rights as 
gifts from their former masters, and sit down in grateful content- 
ment. The kingly power, both in Prussia and in France, seems 
aware of its false position, and anxious to reconstruct an order of 
hereditary aristocracy, endowed with entailed landed property and 
privilege, as a social power for the support of monarchy. But in 
social economy, as in human life, the nulla pes relrorsxim is the 
principle of nature. The abolition of primogeniture, and the 
consequent diffusion of landed property through society, have 
morally, as well as territorially, done away with the class of privi- 
leged feudal aristocracy as an influential social element in both 
countries. It would be the show, not the reality, of a nobility 
that could be re-established now in Prussia or in France. The 
social position and importance of an hereditary aristocracy are, 
besides, filled up by the new social power — the body of function- 
aries, in the social arrangements which have sprung up from the 
ashes of the French Revolution. 



CHAPTER IV. 

PllUSSiA.-^NOT CONSTITUTING ONE NATION.— PRUSSIAN POLICY IN THIS 
CENTURY.— ATTEMPT TO FORM NATIONAL CHARACTER.— WHY NOT 
SUCCESSFUL.— MILITARY ORGANIZATION OF PRUSSIA.— LIABILITY TO 
MILITARY SERVICE OF ALL PRUSSIANS.— SERVICE IN THE LINE.— IN 
THE ARMY OF RESERVE.— FIRST DIVISION.— SECOND.— EFFECTS OF THE 
SYSTEM ON THE POLITICAL BALANCE OF EUROPE.— ITS ADVANTAGES. 
—ITS DISADVANTAGES COMPARED TO A STANDING ARMY.— ITS GREAT 
PRESSURE ON TIME AND INDUSTRY.— ITS INFERIORITY AS A MILITARY 
FORCE.— AMOUNT OF MILITARY FORCE OF PRUSSIA.— DEFECT IN THE 
CONTINENTAL ARMIES.— NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS.— MEN.— TOO 
DELICATELY BRED IN THE PRUSSIAN ARMY.— LONGEVITY OF OFFI- 
CERS.— THE PROBABLE ISSUE OF A WAR BETWEEN PRUSSIA AND 
FRANCE.— POLICY OF ENGLAND IF SUCH A WAR ARISE. 

The Prussians are not nationalized by those moral infiuences 
■which bind men together into distinct commmiities. They are 
not, like the English, the French, the Spaniards, a people distinct 
in character, spirit, and modes of living— a nation unamalgamated 
and unamalgamable with others. They have no national lan- 
guage, literature, or character ; no old established customs, man- 
ners, traditions, modes of living and thinking, laws, rights, or in- 
stitutions of ancient times peculiar to and distinctive of Prussians. 
Their history as a nation is but of yesterday, and is not properly 
their history, but that of the sovereigns of a small part of the 
present Prussia— -of Brandenburg— who beginning the world 
about a century ago with a margraveship of about one and a half 
million of subjects have, by good luck and military talent, gathered 
together a kingdom of shreds and patches of other countries, con- 
taining about fourteen millions of people. These have no national 
history of ancient times common to all, or to a majority of Prussians, 
and connecting the present with the past by feelings of veneration 
and hereditary attachment. Prussia has, in ordinary parlance, 
only a geographical or political meaning denoting the Prussian 
government, or the provinces it governs — not a moral or social 
meaning. The Prussian nation is a combination of words rarely 
heard, of ideas never made, the population not being morally 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 109 

imited by any common sentiment or spirit of nationality distin- 
guishing them in character, mind, or habits from the other German 
populations around them, the Austrian, Bavarian, Saxon, or Han- 
overian. The German populations have never been distinguished 
by any strong spirit of nationality. They have always been 
divisible, like a flock of sheep, into any parcels at the pleasure of 
their shepherds, without vigorous indications of such national 
distinctiveness, character, and feelings of their own, as might 
render their division and amalgamation with other groups danger- 
ous or impracticable. To remedy this defect in their social struc- 
ture, to kindle a spirit of nationality, form a national character, 
and raise a Prussian nation, bound together by moral influences 
like the French or English, as well as by mere territorial and poli- 
tical arrangements, is the great under-principle which has run 
through all the domestic policy of the Prussian government in this 
century. Frederic the Great had no higher policy than to retain 
the territories he had acquired by the means which acquired them 
— a strong standing army, and a military system superior to that 
of other powers. His successors adhered to the same policy ; but 
the first shock with the armies of a people animated by national 
spirit dissolved the dull German delusion, that drill and discipline 
alone are sufficient in modern warfare to replace the higher moral 
influences. Germans against Germans, monarch against monarch, 
in a scramble for territory, and the people in apathy and indifl'ei'- 
ence, and with no interest at issue, the contending potentates made 
conquests according to the number of their highly disciplined 
troops. WarVas really, what it was often compared to, a game 
at chess, in which the royal gamesters could calculate upon the 
powers and effect of each piece and move. The French wars 
from 1794 to 1814 wrought a mighty change in this royal game, 
and made every cabinet of the old school feel, that with national 
sentiment kindled by moral influences, no people can be subdued, 
and without it none can be secure. The alteration in Prussia of 
the law and holding of landed property, and the subversion of the 
ancient feudal relations between the peasantry and the nobility — 
a change almost as great in the state of property, and altogether 
as great in the structure of society, as the revolution produced in 
France ; the new military system, by which the people themselves 
became the only standing army ; the new educational system, by 
which government has in its own hands the training of the mind 



110 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

and opinions of the public through its own functionaries ; the new 
ecclesiastical system, by which the two branches of the Protestant 
church, the Lutheran and Calvinistic, are joined together, and 
blended into one different from both, the Prussian church ; the 
German custom-house union, or commercial league, centralizing 
in Prussia the management of the commercial and manufacturing 
industry connected with the supply of the other German popula- 
tions, and raising a Prussian dominancy over the industrial pur- 
suits of the rest of Germany, are so many steps towards the one 
great object of imbuing the Prussian population with those moral 
influences, without which a populatian is not a nation, and on 
which national greatness, independence, and even existence, de- 
pend. " To what extent has this great experiment been successful ? 
this solitary attempt on the old continent— analogous to that which 
has been so successful on the new — to form a national character, 
to kindle a national spirit, to convert a mass of individuals of 
different origins, languages, religions, histories, laws, customs, into 
a nation ? The American cement, the main ingredient in the 
American cement, is totally wanting in Prussia — freedom, the 
uncontrolled freedom of industry, property, mind, and person, 
without interference of the government by laws to the enactment 
of which the people are no party, and by a system of function- 
arism which supersedes free agency in all civil and even many 
domestic relations of life, and extinguishes the moral influences 
and national spirit which the government wishes to kindle, leaving 
the people a passive mass in the hands of their rulers. The 
Prussian government has taken one step, and is afraid to take the 
next, which naturally and unavoidably must follow the first, and 
lives in an unavailing struggle to reconcile things irreconcilable 
with each other — a supreme interference of the state in all human 
action and opinion among her subjects, with the activity, industry, 
and prosperity, the national character, public spirit, and patriotism, 
which a people only attain where action and opinion are free and 
uncontrolled. 

The present military organization of the subjects of Prussia is 
one of the most important features in the social economy of the 
Continent. It has been adopted, with more or less rigour in its 
application, by almost all the secondary European powers, and 
its principle and spirit enter into all the civil as well as the mili- 
tary arrangements of those countries, and extend an influence 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. Ill 

over the whole social condition of the European population, 
much more extensively than any other military system has done 
since the decay of the feudal. The system of standing armies 
which preceded it, and which still exists with us, entered but 
slightly as an element in the social economy of a country. The 
classes who had to furnish recruits to it either by enlistment, or 
impressment more or less concealed under the forms of a ballot, 
suffered a loss of the members thus abstracted from civil Hfe ; but 
that was almost the only effect on the social economy of the mass 
of the population, excepting the taxation more or less heavy in 
different countries, necessary for supporting a standing army to- 
tally distinct from the people. It is a singular historical fact, that 
Prussia has twice, within these hundred years, furnished the model 
on which almost all the other European powers have formed their 
military force, even to the most minute details. The former mili- 
tary system of Prussia, as it was left in its highest perfection by 
Frederic the Great to his successors, was one of harsh and bruti- 
fying discipline, enforced by the cudgel over trembling squads of 
serfs trained into mere movable machines. The first shock with 
the undisciplined troops of the French republic proved that this 
system was false, that humanity was not to be outraged with 
impunity in the formation of armies, and that mind and moral 
influences were superior elements even in modern tactics to the 
deadening discipline of the corporal's stick. The whole of the 
European armies formed, even to the shape of their buttons, 
upon this Prussian model, were by numberless defeats totally 
disorganized. It is not the least of the benefits resulting from the 
French revolutionary wars, that a more humane spirit of military 
discipline, a greater consideration for the mind and rights of the 
soldier, as a human being, and a greater dependence upon the 
spirit and moral influences than upon a forced mechanical move- 
ment, have been introduced, in consequence of these defeats, into 
the military system of every country. 

The new military system of Prussia, as established by edicts 
of 3d September, 18M, and 21st November, 1815, has been 
adopted by almost all the secondary European powers. By this 
system* every subject between the ages of 20 and 25 years, with- 
out distinction of fortune, birth, class, or intended profession, is 
bound to serve as a private soldier in the ranks of the standing 
* Gesclzc uebcr die Militair Pflichli-koit. Berlin, ISlo. 



112 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

army for a period of three successive years. From this obliga- 
tion only the most obvious incapacity from bodily or mental 
defect or infirmity can excuse any individual, and that incapacity 
must be examined and admitted by the local board of commis- 
sioners for military affairs, whose proceedings are reported to, 
and watched over by, a superior provincial board, and both 
report up6n every claim for exemption to the war department. 
By the construction of these boards it is impossible that favour, 
partiality, or local interest can screen any individual from his 
turn for entering the service for three years — which turn is deter- 
mined by lot drawn by those who are between the prescribed 
years, viz. : between 20 and 25 years of age — nor from serving 
his three years in that particular branch of service or regiment 
for which, from stature, constitution, or previous occupation, he 
may be best adapted. Officers from each branch of service — 
of the guards, artillery, cavalry, and infantry — attend these boards 
at their sittings, for this selection. In order not to press too se- 
verely on the professions or occupations incompatible with such 
a long period of military service, certain exemptions on account 
of the social position of the individual are allowed by favour, 
and on certificate from the proper authorities, so as to reduce the 
period of service in a regiment of the line from three years to 
one year, the individual thus favoured being at the expense of 
his own clothing and accoutrements. But such exemption is the 
exception, not the rule ; is not matter of right, but of favour ; 
and also political convenience, when the ranks of the standing 
army are already sufficiently full. After this service of three 
years in a regiment of the line or standing army, the individual 
returns on leave of absence as a supernumerary, liable to rejoin 
his regiment in case of war ; but upon attaining his 26th year, 
after his three years' service, he is discharged from the lists of 
the standing army into the army of reserve, and into that division 
of it which is called erster Aufgeboths, or first for service. This 
is the real army of the country, being composed entirely of sol- 
diers of three years' training, and between the ages of 26 and 
32 years. The standing army is the formation-school for the 
population. One-third of its numbers is discharged every autumn 
into this division of the army of reserve, and replaced in spring 
out of the population by the local and provincial boards of com- 
missioners. The army of reserve is called out for exercise and 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 113 

field manoeuvres for fourteen days every year, which, however, is 
sometimes extended to four weeks. The individual, after his 32d 
year, is turned over from this first division to the second division 
(zweiten Aufgeboths) of the army of reserve. In case of war, 
this division would not t^ike the field, but would do garrison duty, 
as being composed generally of men with families, and more 
advanced in life, and also of half-invalids who had been found 
unfit for severer duty. After his 49th year, the individual is 
turned over into the land-sturm, or levy en masse, which is only 
mustered or exercised in its own locality, and would only be 
called out in case of actual invasion, or domestic tumult. The 
whole land is thus one vast camp, the whole population one 
army. Every man in every station of life, and in every locality, 
is a drilled soldier, who knows his regiment, his company, his 
squad, his military place in it, and appears under arms at his 
rendezvous for duty with as little delay or confusion, and as 
complete in all military appointments, as a soldier of any stand- 
ing army quartered in cantonments. The admirable precision 
and arrangement with which all the equipments of each portion 
of the army of reserve are placed in convenient depots and head- 
quarters over the country, for the inhabitants of each locality 
belonging to that force, prevent any confusion in the working of 
this vast and admirably arranged military system. Standing 
armies, composed of men enlisted, or impressed, for an unlimited 
period of service, or for a period long enough to separate thenci 
from the rest of society almost entirely, to detach them as a class 
from all the ties and habits of civil life, exist now only in Russia, 
Austria, France, and England. Prussia and all the secondary 
powers have dropped this kind of military force. In France six 
years, and in Austria eight years are the term of service for the 
conscript drawn by ballot for the army, and lately the period is 
extended to eight years in France ; and, as far as regards the 
individual's habits and ties, this is almost equivalent to unlimited 
service. All the other European powers have organized their 
military Ibrce upon the Prussian principle ; and this has imper- 
ceptibly altered most essentially their relative political importance, 
and the weight of Prussia in European allUirs ; and particularly 
has become an element in the social structure, and in the pohtical 
balance of power of the European states, of great interest to 
the political philosopher observant of those silent changes which 



114 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

come over civilized society unremarked, until on some sudden 
crisis they produce striking effects. This national army of the 
Prussian system appears to be the cheapest, the most effective, 
and most valuable military force a country can keep. Its cheap- 
ness, indeed, in proportion to its great numerical strength, and to 
the fine and efficient appearance under arms, to which good 
arrangement and disciphne have brought this force in Prussia, 
has led to the almost general adoption of the system on the Con- 
tinent. The soldiery are only in pay during the period they are 
embodied, that is, during the three years' service in the line, 
when they may be considered as learning their military duty, 
and, afterwards, only during the few weeks yearly of army of 
reserve service, when the troops are assembled for field manoeu- 
vres, in great masses, in different points of the kingdom. Our 
military men who gallop about at these grand Prussian reviews 
declare unanimously their admiration of the appearance, move- 
ments, manoeuvres, and military excellency of the Prussian army ; 
and its drill and equipments, as well as its organization, have 
become a model for other troops, almost as generally as they 
were at the commencement of the revolutionary war, before the 
onset of troops far less exquisitely drilled and dressed than the 
old Prussian army, settled the real value in the field of this parade 
perfection for half a century. 

This kind of military force, however, if duly weighed in all its 
bearings on the community by the political economist, will be 
found in reality the most expensive and ruinous, instead of the 
cheapest, a country can support. It is an enormous pressure, a 
ruinous tax, in reality, upon the industry of a nation — a reckless 
waste of the property — of the time and labour which constitute 
the property — of the labouring and middle classes, and which re- 
duces, and for ever keeps down, the people to a state of poverty. 
Look at its working among those classes. Take, for instance, a 
lad of two and twenty who has just learnt his business as a car- 
penter, smith, weaver, or other handicraft, and then for three years, 
the three most valuable years in his life for acquiring steady habits 
of work, and manual dexterity and skill in his trade, put him into 
a regiment of the line in a distant part of the country to live the 
idle life of a soldier for three years, away from the advice or con- 
trol of his friends, and without seeing or handling the implements 
of the trade he was bred to. What kind of operative tradesman, 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 115 

or head of a family, is such an education to produce? But after 
three years' service he finds his way home, resumes his original 
trade, marries, and from 25 to 4S years of age, that is for 23 years, 
he has to give at the least two weeks yearly — I believe it is more 
usually four weeks — to his army of reserve duty. Now, if we 
take the working years of such a man to be 40, that is from 22 to 
62 years of age, we have 14,600 working days in his life, includ- 
ing, however, Sundays, holydays, sickness-days, and drunkenness- 
days; and out of this gross capital of 14,600 days, this man's 
military duty of three years' service in the line, and 14 days for 
23 years afterwards in the army of reserve, takes away 1417 days, 
or just about 10 per cent, of his operative life. It is equivalent to 
a property tax of 10 per cent., taking the lowest data of calcula- 
tion, upon the labour and industry of the working, producing 
classes of the nation ; and observe it is not 10 per cent, on the 
value only of the produce of the time, labour, and industry of the 
people, that is consumed by those governments, but one-tenth of 
the productive powers themselves— of the very time and labour 
of the people. Nor is this all. It is in the good weather half-year, 
in the drilling and reviewing season only, that many kinds of out- 
door labour and many sorts of crafts can be carried on to advan- 
tage ; and, besides, the greater severity of winter in Prussia, and 
generally on the Continent, the extent of country, and the conse- 
quent inferiority of cross-roads and facilities of transport, impede 
industry and business during the bad weather half-year, to a de- 
gree unknown in our compact, well-roaded land. The working 
man's time is worth double to him at the very season it is taken 
from him by his government for drills and parades. The system 
is incompatible with a progressive condition of a people, with any 
considerable growth of national wealth, or any extensive develop- 
ment of manufacturing industry. The labouring man cannot 
raise his condition to the middle class ; scarcely can he gather 
savings for old age. The middle class is formed under this system 
of taxation on time and labour, not by the rise of individuals from 
the lower class, as in our social system, but by the breaking down 
of the class above itself The German military system, and the 
German commercial league, are at direct variance with each other. 
If the former prevail, and continue to devour the only basis of 
national wealth and prosperity — the time and labour of the people 
— the latter will linger in a forced existence, and gradually die 



116 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

away. If the latter prevail, and Germany become in reality a 
thriving, industrious, manufacturing country, this military system, 
and the whole system of interference of the continental govern- 
ments with the people in all their doings engendered by it, must 
fall to the ground. Many conceive, theoretically, that it must be 
the great safeguard of the liberties of a country, its best protection 
from tyranny, that the whole people have arms in their hands and 
know how to use them. This may be true, if political liberty 
alone, that is, the form or constitution of a free government, be 
all that is understood by liberty, and if the people have got the 
forms of a free government, which they have not in Prussia ; but 
if civil liberty — the right of every individual to the free use of 
his mental and bodily powers, and to his own free agency as a 
moral and social being, subject only to such restrictions as he him- 
self has concurred in and imposes by his own representatives for 
the general good — be the end, and political liberty only the means, 
then this is not true of such a military organization of a whole 
people. It is sacrificing their civil liberty — which is the great end 
and object of free institutions— for their political liberty, if they 
had any, for the defence of a share in the forms of legislation. It 
is paying for the saddle, and leaving nothing to buy the horse. 

It is stated by a statistical writer, Jancigny, as an approxima- 
tion to the proportion of the military to the population of different 
countries, that in Russia 1 in 57 of the population is serving as a 
soldier ; in Prussia 1 in 80 ; in Austria 1 in 118 ; in France 1 in 
122 ; and in England 1 in 320. But in this statistical approxima- 
tion the writer forgets the most important element in it, as far as 
regards the industry, morals, and habits of a people, viz., that in 
England this 1 represents a whole military generation. As long 
as this 1 lasts, the 320 do not furnish another 1 to fill his place as 
a soldier, and when they do, it is 1 who can be spared, whose 
social condition allows him to enlist. In Russia it appears to be 
the same — the 1 represents a whole military generation. In 
Austria and France, the 1 represents 8 years, and 6 years respec- 
tively, during which periods the 1 is not replaced out of the body 
of the community ; and as, after 6 or 8 years of military service, 
many soldiers have lost all civil ties and means of earning a living, 
and re-engage as substitutes for those drawn to replace them, the 
system is nearly equivalent in practice to the English and Russian. 
J3ut in Prussia the 1 represents only 3 years. He is then thrown 



NOTES OP A TRAVELLER. 117 

back with his half military, lialf civil habits, into the mass of the 
community, and another 1 is taken out of the SO, without regard 
to his social position or relation to others, to be demoralized by 
the same process. By demoralized, it is not here meant that the 
soldier is necessarily a less moral man than the civilian, but that 
his habits of industry and steady application to work, and his 
knack or skill in his trade, are necessarily deranged ; and in this 
sense his military service demoralizes him for civil utility. His 
mind and habits, as well as his manual dexterity and aptitude, are 
injnred. The operative, taken away from his factory, where his 
individual intelligence and dexterity may often be most important 
to its prosperity, to be drilled and lead a military life for three 
years, and afterwards yearly for several weeks, returns with his 
habits, mind, and hand out, as workmen express it, when they 
resume their tools after long disuse. He is no competitor against 
a workman in the uninterrupted exercise of his handicraft all his 
life. 

A public trained in the habits of military life are, also, bad 
consumers, as well as bad producers. The whole community 
necessarily brings from the ranks the rough tastes and habits 
easily satisfied with rude production, and very little of it, which 
are inseparable from the condition of the common soldier, what- 
ever class he may flave been originally drawn from. As con- 
sumers, they do not bring into the home market the almost fas- 
tidious and finical taste for and estimate of fine workmanship, 
superior material, and perfect finish, which is a principal element 
in the superiority of one manufacturing country over another. 

Notwithstanding the testimony of all military officers to the fine 
appearance and efficiency of the Prussian troops, it is reasonable to 
believe that men who know that they are only tied to their military 
service in the line for three years, and are hankering after their 
civil occupations, and counting the days until they can return to 
their homes, are, as soldiers, not equal to men who have no con- 
nection with civil life, no tics, cares, hopes, property, or domicil 
beyond their military position. This seems to be a point in human 
nature, on which others as well as military men are able to form 
an opinion ; and as, immediately previous to 1794, the testimony 
of all the military officers of Europe ran quite as high in favour 
of the efficiency of the Prussian army, as then constituted, such 
testimony to its superiority as now constituted cannot be received 



118 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

as altogether infallible. Regiments of the line almost totally re- 
newed in the course of three years, with one-third of their strength 
always raw recruits, and their oldest soldiers, generally speaking, 
of less than three years' standing, can scarcely be equal to old 
regiments of seasoned soldiers, although they may be pattern 
regiments for drill, dress, and good arrangement ; and regiments 
of reserve, although consisting of soldiers of three years' standing, 
if only --embodied for a few days or weeks in summer, are after 
all only a good militia. England, Russia, France, and Austria 
have adopted a far cheaper military system for society, one better 
for the civil liberty of the people, and probably one better too for 
having effective troops, by taking a proportion of the people by 
voluntary enlistment, or by forced conscriptions, and keeping the 
same individuals always, or as long as they are fit for service, 
embodied as an army, relieving the rest, the great body of the 
community, altogether from the heavy annual tax on their time 
and industry, which presses on the people in Prussia and the other 
German States. These scape-goats for the rest of the community 
form, probably, more effective soldiers individually; and collec- 
tively are, without doubt, a more effective military power in the 
hands of a government. The whole population of a monarchy, 
organized, drilled, disciplined, regimented, ready and effective at 
a call to fight for king and country, sounds remarkably well in a 
schoolboy's oration, or a newspaper paragraph. But look closely 
into the thing. A modern army is a political machine composed 
of artillery, cavalry, and infantry, in the hands of a state, and 
movable at its pleasure; and unless this- machine be not only per- 
fect in its parts, but movable and disposable for offensive, aggres- 
sive operation, as well as for mere defence of its native land, it 
is of no real political weight in Europe. Does the Prussian system 
fulfil these conditions of an effective, political, military power ? 
Is it perfect in all its parts, or only as perfect as the nature of its 
formation allows it to be? Artillery and cavalry, the most essen- 
tial parts of this machine, can scarcely be formed at all in less than 
three years, we are told by our most experienced officers who have 
written on tactics ; and in these services the man is part and parcel 
of his horse, or of his gun. He has not, like the infantry soldier, 
a value independent of other things; but out of connection and 
practice with the identical gun, horse, and squad he is trained to 
work with, he is but part of a tool, the stock of a firelock, the 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 119 

handle only of a hammer. It is evident there can be no perfection 
in these two important branches of military power in such militia 
troops. 

Is such a military machine as that of Prussia movable and 
disposable ? Is it a military force which could be shipped to 
attack or to garrison distant colonies — and without colonies Ger- 
many can scarcely become what German politicians fondly dream 
of, a great commercial power — or to carry on such a war as 
France has now on her hands in Africa, or as Russia wages in 
the Caucasus, or even to carry on a few campaigns in Germany 
itself, or in the Netherlands ? If Hanover were to occupy the 
Duchy of Brunswick, or France to invade the Baden or Hessian 
provinces on the Rhine, or to get up a war in the East, is the 
Prussian national army, constituted as it is, a military force which 
could be freely used in a succession of campaigns, like any other 
political military force, on such ordinary political occasions no 
wise affecting directly the safety of Prussia ? Or is this military 
machine defensive only, and, from its composition, of no weight 
or value as an available offensive power? Prussia was called 
upon by sound policy, and the ties of kindred, to prevent the 
dismemberment of the kingdom of the Netherlands, and to extin- 
guish the Belgian revolution; and a few disposable regiments 
sent to Brussels to support the King of Holland— on the same 
principle that Austria sends a few regiments on every alarm into 
the Papal or Neapolitan states — would have turned the scale. 
At the siege of Antwerp, Prussia was obviously called upon in 
honour to take a part, when a French force was actually in the 
field against her allies the Dutch. A good cause was not wanting, 
nor evidently was the will wanting on the part of the Prussian 
royal family and cabinet : but the means, the machinery of an 
aggressive military power, movable at the pleasure of the state, 
for any purpose, for any length of time, and to any quarter, were 
wanting. A Prussian army could be assembled for annual exercise 
and manceuvre on the frontier, for purposes of demonstration, 
and even of occupation of adjoining parishes in Luxembourg; 
but however brilliant, expert, and well disciplined such an army 
might be, and however ready and eager to engage in actual war- 
fare its officers or its»men might be, it is obviously so constituted 
that it cannot be freely used in the field by its government as a 
political machine. The property, the industry, the intelligence. 



120 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

the influence of the country, are in its ranks — all that is vakiable 
in a nation is in its ranks, and not merely a class given up to 
military service as scape-goats for the rest of the community, and 
composed generally of the least valuable and most isolated mem- 
bers in it, whose loss is simply the loss of soldiers. Here, the 
loss would be the loss of the owners or heirs of the property 
of the country — the loss of fathers, husbands, sons — of men on 
whom the interests and industry of the country hinge — of the 
most useful and influential classes in it, not of the unconnected, 
idle, and outcast only, of whom an ordinary standing army is 
composed. The loss by a victory would be greater to Prussia in 
a political and economical view, than the loss by three defeats of 
ordinary troops. The affairs of society would be more deranged ; 
more useful life would be destroyed. An army composed of such 
materials^cannot be risked, unless on the rare occasions, as during 
the last war, when national existence and safety are visibly at 
stake. The loss even of time and labour to all the productive 
classes, the destruction of all manufacturing industry and enter- 
prize by calling out the army of reserve, composed as it is, for 
actual service for a campaign or two, would be such a sacrifice of 
all social interests, as only the most imminent danger could justify. 
If all wars were, like the last, for national existence, no system 
could be superior to the present military arrangement of the 
Prussian population ; and all the secondary European powers 
have run headlong into it, on account of its obvious excellence 
for the defence of a country, and its apparent economy ; and for 
the same reasons, all politicians and political economists are loud 
in its praise. If all the European countries had adopted the same 
miUtary system at the conclusion of the last war, this might have 
been wise. The only question would have been, whether the 
economy is not in appearance only — whether the taking up of the 
time and labour of the whole productive classes of a nation for 
military service, be not in reality a retrograde step in civilization 
and political economy, and one more expensive and ruinous to 
the people than the taxes upon the value of the products of their 
time and labour, necessary to pay a particular class to perform 
that military service for all. But the other powers have each re- 
tained a disposable military force of a different nature, consti- 
tuted on a different principle, and available as a political machine 
for any purpose, in or out of the country, without regard or refer- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 121 

ence to the machine itself, or its connection with the industry and 
property of the nation, and therefore, as a maciiine, of superior 
weight and availabihty in European affairs. The new national 
armies have no aggressive capabiUty, and consequently no power 
of intimidation in them. They are like the enormous pieces of 
ordnance found in old fortifications, to be fired off only in one 
direction, and only in defence. A French diplomatist would 
probably laugh in the face of a Prussian diplomatist who could 
talk seriously of an armed alliance of Prussia and the other Ger- 
man powers who have adopted her military arrangements, for 
any political purpose whatsoever beyond the simple defence of 
their own territories, each for itself from within. The power of 
acting offensively without their own territories is gone. Tliis 
great difference in the constitutions of their armies since the peace 
has produced the most important alteration in the relative weight 
and importance of the European powers. It has altogether 
changed, in an unseen way, the balance of power in Europe. 
For offensive war, and as a political power, Prussia has dropped 
the sword; while Russia, Austria, France, and England have 
retained it as something of weight ready to be thrown, upon 
great questions arising, into the political scale. It is a mistake 
to talk of the five great dominant European powers ; for as a 
belligerent capable of giving effect by offensive operation beyond 
her own territories to her political determinations, Prussia is 
in reality as much out of the question as Denmark, or any of 
the secondary powers in the European system. It is a signal 
instance of the hidden compensations which neutralize and coun- 
terbalance all excess of evil in human affairs, that this great 
military monarchy, the last which made and retained conquests 
and acquisitions of territory without reference to moral principle, 
or appeal to the feeling of the people themselves, or to the sense 
of right among mankind — for such were the conquests of Frederic 
the Great, the acquisitions of Silesia, and of the Polish and Pome- 
ranian provinces now concealed under the name of East Prussia 
— is the first which was shaken to the ground in the late war, 
by the insufficiency of her own military power for her own de- 
fence — a mechanical military power without national feeling; 
and now, by the perfection of the mechanism of her military 
power for home-defence, she is paralyzed, and disarmed as a 
great political power. 
9 



122 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

Of all the European powers, Prussia supports the greatest mih" 
tary establishment in proportion to her extent, population, and 
finances. The infantry of the line is reckoned 132,013 men. The 
cavalry of the line and of the guards, 25,200 men. The artillery 
of the line and of the guards, 22,365 men. Pioneers, miners, and 
other bodies of the engineer corps, 13,500 men. The infantry of 
the landwehr, exercised yearly, 124,737 men. The cavalry of 
the landwehr, exercised for four weeks yearly, 19,656 mounted 
men. The artillery of the landwehr, 17,292 men. The amount, 
including 8118 officers, is 362,881 fighting men. Two-thirds of 
the landwehr, first for service, are sufficient to complete the land- 
wehr regiments to their war establishment, so that one-third 
(above 80,000 men) of this division of the force remains dispo- 
sable, and the whole of the division of the landwehr second for 
service, which is. as strong as the first division. The whole 
available exercised force of Prussia is reckoned by military 
writers at 532,000 men. The artillery is said— of course no 
exact information on such a point can be obtained or sought by 
the traveller — to consist, in pieces complete and useful, of 648 
six-pounders and howitzers, of 216 twelve-pounders, and of 216 
light field-pieces for horse-artillery, besides an unknown amount 
of heavy guns in the fortresses and in 336 garrison towns. The 
funds required in time of profound peace and non-movement of 
troops, to keep up this enormous military force, appears to be 
22,798,000 thalers, out of a total revenue of 51,287,000 thalers. 
The revenue being pushed to the utmost point beyond which the 
productiveness of additional taxation would be null, being man- 
aged and collected also with great economy — the direct taxes 
costing but 4 per cent., and the indirect taxes 15 per cent., on the 
gross amount, as expense of collection— it does not appear how, 
in the event of a war, funds could be found to move this huge 
military machine. The time, labour, industry, and money which 
should have been accumulating during peace in the hands of the 
people, and forming a capital diffused over the country capable 
of bearing the expenses of a war, are expended every year in 
military shows, drills,, and manceuvres, which, even admitting 
that they make perfect soldiers of the whole population, leave 
nothing to move them with in the event of real war — nothing to 
raise taxes from. In the whole Prussian population the number 
of males fit for productive labour, that is, between their, seven- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 123 

teenth and forty-fifth year inclusive, appears to be about three 
millions. It is 3,042,946, including the infirm, sick, blind, lame, 
deformed, and all fit or unfit for military duty and productive 
labour. Above one-sixth of this gross number of productive 
labourers is taken by the state every year, for longer or shorter 
periods, from productive labour, to be employed in the unpro- 
ductive labour of handling their firelocks, marching and manoeu- 
vring. A people whose time and labour are thus taken away 
from industrial occupation can never become rich or powerful as 
a nation, nor well off as individuals. The Duke of Wellington 
was right in an observation which has often been caviled at — 
that notwithstanding our heavy taxation, the English labouring 
people are the least heavily taxed of any labouring people in 
Europe. The time and labour of the common man, with us, are 
not taken from him by his government. The unwieldiness and 
disproportion of the Prussian military force to the industrial force 
which should raise the means to move it, appear from the follow- 
ing comparison : — Prussia,'' with a population of 14 millions, has 
an army of 532,000 men. Austria, with a population of 32 mil- 
Hons, has an army of 750,000 men : but if Austria adopted the 
Prussian military system, her army would amount to 1,216,000 
men. France, estimated in 1841 to have a population of 35 
millions, has an army of 840,000 men; but on the Prussian mili- 
tary system, her army would amount to 1,330,000 men. Great 
Britain, with a population of 26 millions, would, in proportion to 
Prussia, have an army of 987,000 men as her present establish- 
ment—a greater number than in the heat of the last war, reckon- 
ing volunteers, yeomanry, and all, were ever withdrawn from 
preparing the sinews of war by the exercise of private industry, 
to make shows and sham- fights, or even to repel a threatened 
invasion. 

It is a defect in the present construction of the continental 
armies — of that of France as much as any — that the private 
soldier who has raised himself to the station of a non-commissioned 
officer, has no prospect whatsoever of attaining the rank of an 
ofllcer. The class of non-commissioned ofliccrs is, in fact, ex- 
pressly excluded from any higher military promotion by the dis- 
tinction kept up, in most services, between nobility, from whom 

* Betrachtungen eines Militaers ueber einem bevoistehendeu Krieg 
zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich. Leipsic, 1841. 



124 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

alone officers can be appointed, and the non-noble, citizen, or 
burgerliche class. In France and Prussia this distinction is kept 
up by appointing officers only from the cadets, or military schools, 
and requiring scientific examinations for a commission. The 
sons of functionaries, civil or military, who are educated care- 
fully, and at some expense to the state, as well as to their 
parents, are thus exclusively entitled to become officers ; and as 
functionarism breeds up to its own supply, there is especially in 
the healthy services of those powers who have no colonies or 
unwholesorbe climes to wear out human life in, always a surplus 
of those who have a right by education, promise, and long ex- 
pectation, to vacancies as they occur in the regiments in which 
they are doing duty as expectants or cadets. The meritorious 
private soldier or non-commissioned officer is thus entirely ex- 
cluded from any chance of promotion. Now this is a defect 
upon which a civilian is entitled to form an opinion as well as a 
military man, because it is a defect in the application of principles 
of social economy common to all institutions in society, as well 
as to an army. To exclude merit or capability from the highest 
point to be attained can never be a good arrangement in any 
social institution. Education is the plea upon which this exclu- 
sion of the whole class of non-commissioned officers from pro- 
motion in the Prussian service is justified. Education is certainly 
not to be undervalued, especially for the officer ; but, if we con- 
sider what the duties of a commissioned officer are, as ensign, 
lieutenant, or captain, and that in an army of a hundred thousand 
men, not two hundred are required to apply science or high 
education to their military duties, it appears obviously to be only 
a cover for the monopoly of the rank of commissioned officers 
by a particular class, to require that every subaltern should be 
educated to take the command of the movement of armies, and 
should pass through scientific examinations which would proba- 
bly puzzle a Wellington. A sergeant-major with his sergeants 
manoeuvres his company, troop, or regiment, without the aid of 
the officers. He does daily the duties which they superintend, 
and in reality learn practically to do from him. To shut the 
door totally upon this class is evidently a faulty arrangement of. 
the hiilitary system of a country. The efficiency of the French 
armies, so long as this door was thrown wide open — that is, during 
the whole of the Republican period, and until the Emperor Napo- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 125 

leon shut it upon them, and upon his own success — proves that 
210 military force is well constituted under the exclusion of the 
common soldier from the hope of attaining the higher military- 
situations. The moral principle is too powerful for the aristo- 
cratic, in modern times, even in military arrangement. The 
French and Prussian governments, without acknowledging the 
exclusion in favour of a noblesse, introduce it practically, by re- 
quiring the education which their noblesse, or functionary class, 
can alone afford to give. I could not hear of a single instance in 
Prussia of a man, not entered as a cadet, and entitled by his ex- 
aminations in science to a commission, who had risen from the 
ranks, since the peace, to the station of an officer. The govern- 
ment, indeed, has expressly declared, that the ultimate reward of 
long service and merit in this class is to be the appointment to 
such civil offices in the departments under government, as the 
non-commissioned officer or private soldier may be qualified to 
fill. In France, it is this defect in her military system which, in 
time of peace, seems inseparable from her civil arrangements, 
from her functionary system, that keeps alive the discontented 
republican spirit in the great body of the youth who supply the 
ranks, yet are excluded from promotion in the army. The reign- 
ing family never can obtain military popularity, as this exclusion 
is naturally ascribed to their system of government, and is not 
upheld by any distinction in civil society between those within 
and those without the pale of military promotion. The "/?e/<7 
caporal,^'' applied to Napoleon, is not merely a term of endear- 
ment in the recollections of the French soldiery — it has a political 
meaning. In England, this defect in the old military arrange- 
ments has been perceived by the late liberal ministry ; and the 
non-commissioned class has been raised to a higher respectability 
than in any service in Europe. The chances are small, no doubt, 
in the British army, of the private soldier or non-commissioned 
officer attaining the rank of officer ; yet more such promotions of 
men, originally from the ranks, take place in one year in the 
British service, than have taken place since the peace in all the 
continental services put together. The non-commissioned class in 
an army are tho equivalent to the middle classes in civil society. 
When the want of education, the vice, the brutality of our lower 
orders, are so much talked of by our higher orders, it is some- 



126 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

the enlisted soldiery — no want of men of education and conduct 
to form a class which, in moral and intellectual condition, stands 
above the middle class of civil society, and not at all below the 
higher orders who vilified that fmm which it is formed. Is it not 
in a great degree a mere fa^on de parler among our gentry, 
when thoy speak of an ignorance and moral and intellectual 
degradation of our working classes, with whom they in reality 
never mix or converse on such a footing as to know what they 
are ? The superior status, as men of conduct and intelligence, of 
this middle class in miUtary life, its higher respectability, and 
greater efficiency in the British service, strike the traveller 
abroad, who happens to observe the different style of doing 
those ordinary duties in which the men are left entirely with a 
corporal or sergeant — as in relieving sentries — in the British and 
in foreign regiments. In the latter, it is obvious that, when the 
eye of the officer is off, the restraint of discipline is not upon the 
men. The unmilitary observer abroad can apply no other test of 
the state of discipline to what he sees of soldiery, than the precise 
or lax style of the men when in charge of non-commissioned offi- 
cers only. If this be an admissible test, the discipline of the 
British service is more genuine and better than that of the Prus- 
sian. 

Two distinct elements may enter into the construction of a 
military force in modern times. The rough peasant, or working- 
man-element may compose not only the main body of the soldiery 
and non-commissioned officers, but may be mixed pretty high up 
even in the class of commissioned officers ; or the gentleman-ele- 
ment, that of the educated, refined, delicately bred and brought 
up classes, may, by the formation of the military force out of the 
social body, be found preponderating, if not in numbers, at least in 
example and influence, in the ranks of an army. Which of the 
two, as military machines, would a Wellington prefer to work 
with in a campaign? It is possible that a certain delicacy of 
mind and body, a certain impatience of fatigue and discomfort, 
a certain over-refinement for the work of the common soldier, 
may creep into and pervade too generally the mass of an army, 
assimilating the rougher material of which soldiery, to be effect- 
ive, must be composed, too much to itself The soldier, like the 
horse, may be too finely bred, too delicately reared for his work, 
too soft, too refined, too much used to comforts. The composiT 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 127 

tion of the Prussian army, drawn indiscriminately from all classes, 
from the middle and comfortable as well as the roughly living 
classes, has this defect evidently in it, Tlie common labouring 
man himself on the Continent is, from the nattire of the climate 
and his indoor employments for half the year, much less exposed 
to, and le^ hardened against wet, cold, fatigue, and privation, 
than our common people. Those above the mere labouring class, 
the peasantry, the artisans, the middle class, and higher classes, 
all of whom are in the ranks, are so comfortably brought up, so 
wont to their regular meals, their cup of cofiee, their pipe, their 
warm clothing, warm rooms, and are so cold-catching and sensi- 
ble of weather, wet, fatigue, and discomfort, that even our high- 
est classes of nobility and gentry are much more hardy, and, as 
every traveller remarks, far more robust in constitution and capa- 
bility of enduring great fatigue and privation, than the very serv- 
ants they hire on the Continent to attend them. A military force 
composed of such a material may be very brilliant for a single field- 
day, a battle, or a short campaign even, and very effective for home 
defence, but is not of the stuff' for long rough fatigue and perse- 
vering endurance of all discomfort and privation, which in all ordi- 
nary military conjunctures are the military qualities that insure 
success. Something of this want of the rougher material, and 
of this excess of the finer material, appears, even to the unmili- 
tary eye, about the Prussian soldiery. They are light, well made, 
even elegant figures — youths evidently formed upon the standard 
of a higher class of society than the common men in other ser- 
vices. They have not only the use of their limbs, but the kind 
of grace of movement which such exercises as dancing, fencing 
and gymnastics give. They attitudinize well on sentry, dress 
individually well, and with a certain degree of dandyism, panta- 
looned, padded and laced in, and which beseems the soldier. 
But still the unmilitary English eye of the common traveller 
misses the giant frame, strength, and vigour, of the front rank 
men of our good regiments of the line. The guards even, and 
cuirassiers, compared to the British, appear — can it be prejudice, 
or is it reality? — of ordinary infantry and ordinary dragoon make 
and size. Put them in the uniforms of riflemen, or of hussars, 
and they would pass for such on ordinary unmilitary people ; but 
put one of our horse-guards or cuirassiers on the horse, and in 
the accoutrements of a light cavalry man, or one of our grcna- 



128 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

diers, not of the guards alone but of any of our good regiments, 
into a light infantry company, and there is not a grocer in Mary- 
lebone parish who would not find out at once that thjs kind of man 
was misplaced. Now this kind of man— the strong, sinewy, 
bony, muscular, grenadier frame of man, such as composes the 
front ranks at least of all our good regiments of the line — is a 
very scarce kind of man in Germany, probably from the natural 
growth and make of the people, and also from their softer and 
more delicate, more sedentary, more indoor life in boyhood when 
the frame is forming. If you see a stout man he is generally 
fleshy, with more weight than strength. A tendency to grow 
corpulent, and with what generally accompanies that tendency 
of the frame, a shortness of the arm bones as compared to men 
of the same size, of lean, spare constitutions, is very common in 
Germany. This tendency to a lusty, roundabout, rather than a 
muscular growth, strikes the eye in the Prussian soldiery, and is 
no doubt derived from the easy, regular, good living, to which the 
classes from whom the ranks are filled have been accustomed from 
infancy. If a doubt maybe permitted to a traveller, not certainly 
qualified to judge of such military matters, it would be — Is this 
so good a material to form an army of, this admixture of a class 
more delicately bred than the common labouring man, and giving 
its own habits, wants, and tastes, to the whole mass ? Is this 
gentleman-element so well adapted to stand privation, fatigue, 
discomfort, and all that assails the common soldier, as the rougher 
material, the common working-man element, out of which our 
army is composed ? 

Another obvious defect in the military establishment of Prussia 
is the want of any cure for longevity. The common men live, 
indeed, too short a time in the service — only for three years; 
but the officers live by far too long. Captains of companies of 
forty-five years of age, and lieutenants advancing to that time of 
life, are too common. Africa in the French service, the East and 
West Indies, the expense of home quarters, and the good half 
pay in our service, are remedies counteracting in some degree 
this malady, the most pernicious to the efficiency and vigour of a 
military force that can get the ascendency in it. It was the main 
cause of the destruction of the Prussian army in the first cam- 
paigns of the revolutionary war against the French •, and our own 
army never did any good in the last war until the elderly gentle- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 129 

men were got rid of, and captains of companies were generally 
under five-and-twenty, and field officers under five-and-thirty. 
With officers of the age when, in the course of nature, activity, 
endurance of fatigue, elasticity of body and mind, are failing, 
order, discipline, and appearance may be kept up admirably in a 
body of men, but the spirit and dash are wanting. Prussia has 
no unwholesome districts, or severe military duties wearing out 
human life, or disgusting the officer with the service, and but few 
advantages for the military man to retire upon when getting too 
old for the duties of the inferior officer. The promotion is con- 
sequently slow, and men grow old in situations which require 
the spirit and activity of youth. It is not in the habits, also, of 
the upper class to keep themselves young by hard exercise or 
fatigue. The French officer is perpetually in movement like a 
hyena in his den. It may be only a den of a coffee-room, or 
billiard-room ; but there he is all day, in perpetual activity of 
mind and body. The English officer has his daily feat of pedes- 
trianism, harder than any forced march ; his hunting, his shooting, 
and is always in wind and working condition for any exertion. 
The German officers seem naturally of more sedentary habits. 
You seldom see them taking heavy downright fatigue for mere 
pleasure or emulation, as our young officers do. The very school- 
boys walk, and don't run in Germany. 

In the event of a rupture with France upon the French claim 
of having the Rhine for their boundary, the chances would run 
very much against Prussia, notwithstanding the excellence of her 
military arrangements for defence : it is a national question in 
France, one which has become almost personal in the spirit of 
every Frenchman : it is a mere political distant object to the great 
majority of the Prussian population. They have shown them- 
selves capable of great exertion on great occasions ; but this 
would not be one of those great occasions which call forth na- 
tional spirit for the defence of national existence, or material 
interests. German steam is not easily got up. The jealousy of 
the governments extinguishes everywhere in Germany the ex- 
pression of public opinion, and consequently the diffusion of 
national spirit on subjects not immediately pressing upon the 
people. No political discussions in newspapers or in conversa- 
tion, no agitation or party feelings upon their own affairs, keep 
alive the flame. In public places where people meet and talk, 



130 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

the literature or science of the day, the theatre, opera, or ballet, 
and perhaps the reviews of the military, and the journeys of their 
princes to or from their residences, are discussed, but never the 
national objects, interests, or politics. You never hear among the 
lowest class of Germans the vulgar prejudices of the vulgar 
Englishman, Frenchman, or American, about the superiority of 
his country, which make him insufferable as an individual, but 
respectable as an atom of a nation inspired with the same intense 
public spirit. The Prussians are educated, trained, and governed 
out of this spirit. The German newspaper writers, since the 
agitation of France, under the administration of Thiers, about 
the Rhine boundary, begin to talk of a German national spirit to 
be kindled in every breast by the German commercial league, but 
have only got so far, as yet, as to tie quarreling about whether 
this universal Teutonic flame is to be lighted upon a Prussian 
hearth-stone, or is to have a fire-place for itself: whether all 
Germany is to be Prussia, or Prussia a part of all Germany 
united into one bundle, and set fire to as soon as the French 
march to the Rhine. Considered as a question in the social 
economy of Europe, France has already made the conquest. 
French law and French distribution of property through society, 
French courts for civil and criminal affairs, French ideas of the 
rights of a people to a constitutional representation in the legisla- 
ture of the country, are already at the Rhine. The French con- 
stitution in which the people have some share of political power 
in the legislature, and some checks upon the government of the 
monarch, the trial by jury, the publicity of all public affairs, the 
one simple code of Napoleon regulating all private affairs, place 
France some ages in advance of Prussia with her uncontrolled 
autocratic principle of government. The people on the Rhine 
are advanced to that social condition with respect to industry, 
property, and intelligence, in which the French government 
would suit them, and have got far beyond that condition for 
which the Prussian government may be suitable. The political 
change from the one form and principles of government to the 
other must inevitably follow. Prussia, in reality has not, in the 
event of a war, the means to prevent it. The partition of Poland 
is but beginning now to present her with the fruits of iniquity. 
The two or three millions of Polish subjects of Prussia, so far 
from being amalgamated with the Prussian subjects, live in a 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 131 

Stale of passive resistance to the Prussian government. They 
cuhivate their own nationaUty, will not piix with the Prussians, 
and will not even accept of civil office, or educate their children 
in the German language, customs, and laws, so as to fill the civil 
functions in their own country. They hold themselves as subju- 
gated provinces, and are evidently in a state which will paralyze 
the Prussian military power the moment the French throw up a 
signal rocket from the banks of the Rhine. All that time had 
done since the partition of Poland towards amalgamating the 
people with Prussia, has been lost by the Prussian government 
delivering up to Russia the Poles who had sought refuge, during 
the late commotions in Poland, among their relations and friends 
on what they considered Prussian territory. At present the Polish 
peasants who desert their homes in Russian Poland to escape the 
military conscription, are seized in the villages of Prussian Poland, 
and sent back. This, say the Prussian Poles, justly enough is not 
the state of a country amalgamated and incorporated with another 
independent country and protecting government, but the state of 
a subjugated country held only by conquest, and entitled to throw 
oft' the yoke. So general has this spirit of passive resistance to 
Prussian rule become in this part of the Prussian dominions, that 
his present majesty has been obliged, since his accession, to remind 
his Polish subjects by a proclamation, that they have been incor- 
porated with his kingdom in the settlement of Europe, in 1815, 
by the five great European powers. The Poles quietly reply, 
that three of the five are themselves the robbers, partaking in 
the spoil to which they gave themselves these legitimate rights ; 
and refer to the undeniable non-protection of their provinces as 
Prussian territory, for the proof that they are not Prussian. 

It is here, and on the Rhine, that the flame of war will first 
break out on the Continent of Europe. What will be the policy 
of England? The day is past when an English ministry, how- 
ever conservative, could venture to propose to the country to join 
a despotic state in subjugating Poland, or in repressing the exten- 
sion of constitutional representative government over an enlight- 
ened, manufacturing, and commercial population on the Rhine. 
The aggrandizement of France by such an accession of territory 
and people is a bugbear which, in the present age, would not 
mislead the common sense of England, because it would be an 
accession of the elements of peace, inttustrj^, manufactures, and 



132 NOTES OP A TRAVELLER. 

power in the public affairs of France, lodged in the hands of an 
enlightened, industrious, peaceful population— not an accession of 
warlike spirit and means ; and is at any rate an aggrandizement in 
no way affecting English interests or honour. England can only 
be a gainer, if every population from the White Sea to the Straits 
of Gibraltar were to give themselves free institutions, civil and 
political liberty, influence of the public over public affairs, and 
the power of restraining their rulers from wars or oppression. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE GERMAN CUSTOMS' UNION, OR COMMERCIAL LEAGUE.— ITS ORIGIN 
OBJECTS—POLITICAL BEARINGS— AND PROBABLE EFFECTS. 

Will Prussia find in manufacturing and commercial industry, 
under the working of the German commercial league, that aug- 
mentation of her national wealth and power, that political great- 
ness and weight in the European system, which she has evidently 
missed by her overstrained military arrangements ? It may be 
doubted. The military arrangements of the Prussian system of 
government, and that social economy under which productive 
industry flourishes in a country, are altogether opposed to each 
other. They are founded on adverse principles : the one on re- 
straint, superintendence, and the interference of government with 
all individual action ; the other on the perfect free agency of men 
in all industrial pursuits. Both cannot exist together. 

But the German commercial league is a social movement so 
important in principle, so pregnant with great unlooked-for results, 
and so novel in the social economy of the German people, that it 
would be a very short-sighted view to consider it with reference 
to Prussia alone. Prussia, indeed, established it in its present ex- 
tent, is at the head of the union, and her population is about one 
half of all included within it; and Prussia being in possession, on 
the Baltic, on the Rhine, and in her Silesian and Saxon provinces, 
of almost all the commerce, manufactures, and capital within the 
circle of the union, will undoubtedly derive great advantages from 
it. But it has become a general overwhelming movement of the 
whole Germanic people towards a higher social condition — a 
movement in which the temporary and partial interests or influ- 
ences of one state or another are lost, and in which the govern- 
ments which began it, lead it, and are ostensibly at the head of it, 
are but the instruments. They have brought it to a certain point, 
beyond which it is rolling of itself, independent of their petty 
control, to higher social results than perhaps they ever wished or 



134 NOTES OP A TRAVELLER. 

ever contemplated. The German people are, for the first thne in 
German history, united in one great object of material interests. 
They have been united before, in great and conflicting masses, 
for the political interests of their rulers, for religious interests, for 
the support or subversion of interests which may be called intel- 
lectual rather than material, as no advantage or amelioration of 
the social condition of the people was involved in them ; but now 
they are united for a clearly seen material interest ; and, for the 
first time, have made the influence of public opinion an effective 
state power in their internal affairs, and have made the public 
voice to be listened to and obeyed in the interior of the most 
exclusive and autocratic of cabinets; it is the " Young Germany" 
in old heads. The German commercial league is, in its results, to 
be the most important and interesting event of this half century. 

The first and simple object of this association, which commenced 
among the small independent principalities in Thuringia, was to 
save the expense of each little state keeping up custom-house 
guards all round its own little frontiers, by equalizing the custom- 
house duties levied on goods imported, exported, or in transit, 
according to one tariff" adopted by all, so that the duties being 
once paid at the general frontier, the goods might circulate, free 
of all other duties or examinations, through all the states of the 
union. The advantage of this arrangement may be appreciated 
from the fact, that, when each state had its own custom-house 
duties and examinations, on the Rhine alone, goods had to pass 
through twenty-seven different custom-houses. The duties now 
collected at once upon the general frontier, according to a gene- 
ral tariff adopted by all, are divided among the different states of 
the league, or union, in proportions according to the ratio of their 
respective populations as taken every three years. 

This principle of division, equitable as it appears at first sight, 
is in reality not so, and on that account includes a germ of discord. 
States which have great towns, or considerable manufacturing and 
trading populations, import and consume much more of the duty- 
paying, taxable commodities than a poor agricultural population 
of the same numbers ; and such states, Prussia itself among them, 
draw now much less revenue from the new than they did from 
the old system of levying the custom-house duties; and as town 
duties and salt duties, beer duties and others, are still retained by 
some of the united countries in severality, and the passport system 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 135 

of examination of personal movement is still adhered to in all, 
the body of functionaries, who are in reality become a state power, 
is everywhere kept up, nearly as before, in numbers, and the ex- 
pense to each state of a preventive force on its own frontiers is 
not greatly diminished. To Prussia it makes a difference of half 
a million of dollars of loss. It is in fact an luijust principle, how- 
ever ditficult to find a better, that, for instance, the 64,000 inhabit- 
arTts of the town and state of Frankfort, the wealthiest and most 
luxurious, perhaps, in Germany, should produce no more revenue 
to their government from their consumpt than 64,000 of the 
wretched peasantry of Hesse or Bavaria to their state. This par- 
ticular case was, I believe, considered and adjusted more equitably 
when Frankfort joined the union. 

Another latent source of dislike to the whole system, on the 
part of the small independent states and principalities, is the dread , 
that this may be the first step of the Prussian power towards 
mediatizing them. The command and management of so im- 
portant a branch of their revenues by an autocratic government 
inimical to representative government may justly be considered 
dangerous to the independence of the smaller states, especially of 
those which have constitutions. This jealousy appears from the 
represdiitatives of the states engaged in the German league trans- 
acting their business in different towns in turn, but not at Berlin, 
or at any fixed place in the Prussian dominions, and from their 
allowing Prussia only one voice in the affairs of the league, al- 
though her population is about one-half, and her interest more than 
half, of all the parties concerned in it. 

Mediatize is a word which came into use at the Congress of Vi- 
enna of 1814—15, when Europe was parceled oat by Prince Met- 
ternich and Lord Castlereagh, and signifies the taking of small 
states because they are small, and giving them to great states be- 
cause they are great, without more regard to the rights of parties, 
or wishes of the people, than in the operation called highway rob- 
bery. A great and undeniable good, however, was obtained by 
abolishing the vexatious and vexatiously exercised power of many 
of these petty states. They were founded not on equitable, or 
federal and natural, but on feudal principle. The people were in 
all physical and moral circumstances in the same state as their 
neighbours at a short distance, who stood under a totally different 
mode of government, with different laws and courls. Tjic exlinc- 



136 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

tion of such little independent, microscopic despotisms on the face 
of Europe was an undoubted benefit to society, and may, fairly 
considered, reconcile the world to the mediatizing them, unjust as 
the measure and principle may have been to the little potentate 
who fell from the glory of an independent ruler over 3000 or 4000 
subjects, to the rank of a Prussian nobleman. His subjects gained 
by the exchange of petty vexatious government for general laws 
which affected all equally, however burdensome they might be, 
and were administered without favour or partiality to individuals 
or classes by the public functionaries of a great state. 

It is a question for which Europe perhaps is not yet ripe, but 
which in the progress of society must be determined, — Whether 
any power has a right, on just principle, to levy duties upon goods 
in transit to a third country, and merely passing up or down the 
rivers, or over the roads of the state levying the duties. Tolls for 
the repair and support of roads, river-ways, harbours, are unques- 
tionably equitable ; but any revenue beyond this levied from goods 
in transit can only be justified on the principle on which the old 
chiefs of the robber castles on the Rhine levied a similar ransom 
from the passing merchant — force. It is possible that America 
may some day tell the European powers who levy this tax on 
goods not the property of their own subjects,— We supply our 
customers behind you, the Swiss, Russians or Austrians, with cot- 
ton for their manufactures, with coffee, tobacco, &c. ; we transport 
it by sea without paying transit duties to any state 5 and we see 
no reason why fresh water should not be as free as salt water, and 
land as either ; and why we should not transport our goods to the 
buyers, up the rivers, and over the roads, as freely as along the 
coasts of Europe, paying only for what we use and benefit by, 
viz., light-houses, harbours, road money, towing-path money, and 
such tools. The liherum mare includes, if it be a just principle 
of international law, the lihei^a terra as a necessary consequence. 
A non-intercourse act on the part of the United States, against 
those European governments which choose to adhere to the old 
feudal trammels on the universal freedom of trade which have no 
foundation but in unprincipled force, would adjust many griev- 
ances in Europe to their advantage, and is the only kind of force 
which America can apply efficaciously against the great European 
powers. 

The second and most popular object of this great social move- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 137 

ment in Germany is, by a prudent and well-constructed tariff of 
duties, to protect and encourage German industry and manufac- 
turers, to exclude by duties the foreign producer from the German 
market, and to extend the exportation of the products of their 
own industry to foreign markets. " This," says every German, 
" is the march by which England has reached her present wealth 
and greatness, and we should follow the same steps, of exclusion 
of foreign protection of our own manufactures, by duties pro- 
perly devised, and suited to our position." There are reason and 
good sense, along with the contrary, in these views. 

It is a mistake to ascribe this mighty movement of the public 
mind in Germany, as M. Molineau, M. Cargil, Mr. Urquhart, 
and other writers on politics and political economy do, to political 
causes, to Russian influence acting secretly on the Prussian go- 
vernment, or to the jealousy of France entertained by Prussia, 
or to any enmity of any power to England. There is the most 
influential of potentates at work in it — the material interest of the 
German people themselves. Their union on tiieir clearly seen 
material interests is, in truth, the natural, desirable, and for all 
mankind beneficial march of civilization in Europe towards a 
higher state — as beneficial to the English nation as to the Ger- 
mans themselves ; for in poUtical economy, as in private trade, 
what enriches our neighbours eventually enriches ourselves. 

The German commercial league, or, more properly, the German 
custom-house duty association, consists of the following popula- 
tions : — 

Prussia (excepting Neufchatel, a Swiss canton) - 
Bavaria (with some Saxon appendages) - - - 

Saxony ...-.-. 
Wirtemberg (with HohenzoUern Zigmaringen, &c.) 
Principality of Hesse ..... 

Grand Duchy of Hesse and Hesse Homburg 
The small states previously associated as the Thuringcr league 
Grand Duchy of Baden, part of HohenzoUern Zigmariiigen 
Nassau ....... 

Town and territory of Frankfort - - - - 

Brunswick ...._. 

A population in all about 

Each of the powers above stated has an equal voice in the af- 
fairs of the union— a concession to the jealousy of the small states 
10 



- 14,098,125 


- 4.315.469 


- 1.652,114 


- 1,667,901 


632,761 


792,736 


931,580 


- 1,264,482 


383,730 


63,936 


253,500 


- 2(i,646,034 



138 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

which Prussia had to make, ahhoiigh in itself unjust, and there- 
fore only temporary, for her population is half, at least, of all in- 
cluded in the league. The affairs, the settling the tariff, the 
establishing custom-houses and preventive guards on the general 
frontier, the revisal of expenses, of income, of the distribution, 
and all other business, are managed by delegates from the differ- 
ent states meeting at different towns in turn. 

This remarkable union, which commenced in 1816 in Thurin- 
gia, merely for the economy and convenience of levying their 
duties, was taken up by Prussia with probably more ambitious 
views, and by persuasion, coercion, and the popularity of the 
scheme with the German people, and its experienced advantages, 
has been extended over ail the countries from the Lake of Con- 
stance to the Baltic, from the Moselle to the Niemen, with the 
exception only of Hanover, Mecklenburg, the Hanstowns, the 
Danish Germanic provinces of Holstein and Schleswig, and one 
or two small principalities. All that can be called Germany out- 
side of the Austrian frontier is, with these exceptions,incorporated 
in this Germanic league ; and the people having, for the first time, 
common interests in all that the league proposes or effects, and 
the influence of public opinion on public affairs having, for the 
first time, shown itself in vigour, in carrying through the union 
with the league of states, which, secretly, were averse to it, or 
had, as Frankfort, interests directly opposed to it; the enthusiasm 
and unanimity of all classes on all subjects connected with this 
league; the discussions of its importance and effects on the pros- 
perity of all united Germany, exceed any demonstration of the 
public mind ever known among the German people. The first 
object of Prussia in taking up the league was, no doubt, Prus- 
sian ; was to advance her own power over the industry and com- 
merce of all the rest of Germany ; to secure an exclusive market 
for the productions of her manufacturing provinces on the Rhine, 
in all the countries which have no physical advantages for esta- 
blishing manufactures themselves; and, but for this league, would 
supply their wants from the nearer and cheaper markets of Swit- 
zerland, France, Belgium, or England. The object or hope of the 
Prussian government was, no doubt, to interweave her influence 
with the industry, commerce, and material interests of all Ger- 
many, so as eventually to supplant Austria and the state ma- 
chinery of the German confederated states, and bring all the 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 139 

latter ultimately under the Prussian sceptre. But Prussia had 
not taken into account the force of the new element she had con- 
jured up in German aflairs — the will, opinion, determined judg- 
ment, and effective capital of the German people, which entered 
with irresistible power into the aflairs and objects of the league. 
She herself had kindled this spark; for the junction of Frankfort 
with the league, clearly against her own interests as a great com- 
mercial entrepot for all foreign manufactures wheresoever pro- 
duced, and of some of the other states, as Brunswick, was effected 
by the coercion of public opinion excited by Prussia throughout 
Germany, to support the objects of the league. This new element, 
this new power in German affairs, has, in reality, taken the reins. 
Prussia has to follow, instead of leading, the public mind on the 
affairs of the league. The commercial treaty with Holland and 
that with England have been discussed and canvassed in every 
corner of Germany, as independently of Prussia as of any of the 
most insignificant states in the union. The treaties are praised 
or blamed, according to the knowledge and judgment of the writer 
or speaker ; but it is quite clear, from the general tone and ex- 
pression on the subject, that Prussian objects or interests in the 
league are thrown overboard, and that if Prussia is accepted of 
as the head of one united German interest, it is not as Prussia is, 
not as an autocratic military state without responsible ministers 
or a representative constitution, and merely Avith a cabinet of 
functionaries legislating from their own ideas or experience upon 
the complicated commercial interests of merchants and manufoc- 
turers, as upon the simple affairs of peasantry and militia. Prus- 
sia stands in an awkward political dilemma. She is pledged to a 
league which, if it succeed even to a moderate extent, must over- 
turn the autocratic principle of her government. Manufacturing 
and commercial prosperity and autocratic government, that is, a 
government legislating, however wisely and mildly, by edicts and 
irresponsible functionarism from its cabinet, are of incompatible 
co-existence. Public confidence in it for long unchangeable uni- 
formity of legislation is wanting, as the uncertain favour of a mi- 
nister, or life of a sovereign, stands alone between the capitalist 
and political changes which may aflect his capital. In the pre- 
sent age the merchant, the manufacturer, the class of capitalists, 
must have a clear and acknowledged voice in all public affairs, 
must stand at the helm of the vessel which carries their interests, 



140 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

and will not trust to the pilotage of royalty and its military and 
civil functionaries. This unforeseen dilemma of the Prussian 
state, and the unknown results to the monarchical principle itself 
as an autocratic power independent of the people, which are in- 
volved in the spirit in which the league has been taken up by the 
German populations, and made a common point of union for a 
liberal object under guidance of public opinion, will probably 
prove a secret dead weight upon the natural progress of this 
great social movement. It is already whispered that, in high 
circles, the retrograde movement to the old restrictions on the 
exercise of trade is talked of with favour ; the thing, it is con- 
ceived, has gone too far. 

The imaginative tendency of the German mind certainly leads 
the public, at present, into exaggerated expectations from the 
league, and makes them overlook many obstacles, physical, moral, 
and political, some removable, some not, which will prevent their 
exaggerated expectations from being realized. Their reasonable 
expectations, viz., that in time they may supply much of their own 
wants by their own industry and capital, and give employment in 
commerce and manufactures to the population which agricultural 
labour cannot absorb, may, to a certain extent, be attained. Their 
exaggerated expectations are, that Germany is to run the same 
career as England ; to attain the same national wealth ; to force 
or persuade Holland, Belgium, Hanover, Hamburgh, Denmark, 
to become members of the league ; to exclude all but their own 
goods and manufactures from the Continent ; to become an ac- 
knowledged political power; to have a common flag, common 
revenues; to have fleets, armies, colonies, and to be a great naval 
power on the ocean.* These wild fancies are gravely stated as 
practicable objects in the German pamphlets and newspapers of 
the day; and staid prudent people, from whom any notions so 
wide of common sense are unexpected, entertain them in all sim- 
plicity and seriousness. The commercial league occupies much 
of the public mind in the interior of Germany with such reveries. 
Imaginative writers, as well as the capitalists in the trading towns, 
have laid hold of the subject, and have taken the lead from the 
practical men in guiding public opinion. The real and the delu- 
sive, the possible and the impossible, are thus so curiously mixed 
up in the speculations of the Germans with regard to the league 
* See the Alkemeine Zeitune, 1841. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 141 

and its results, that it will be useful to sum up the amount, and 
cast out the false items from the true. 

The reasonable and natural objects of the league, viz., to facili- 
tate communications by the removal of local restrictions, and to 
promote German industry and manufactures by protecting duties 
on supplies from abroad of the articles which can be manufac- 
tured at home, are only to a certain extent practicable in Ger- 
many, reasonable and natural as they appear, on a general view, 
to be. lu England we fall into a delusion by applying to Ger- 
many ideas formed upon our own compact, well-loaded land in 
which every distant point responds instantly to the pulsation at 
the heart; the Germans fall into the same error by applying ideas 
formed upon the social economy of England, or of France, to a 
vast extent of country peopled by distinct existences, in which 
each province, each town, each parish, each family has its distinct 
interests, and from physical as well as conventional causes, lives 
in a state of isolation. These are not bound together by material 
interests common to all. France, extensive as her land is, has over 
all common interests, — has her vast wine manufacture in the south 
supplying the north with that necessary of life, and her manu- 
factures and products of the north supplying the south with what 
it cannot produce. There is a natural bond of material interests 
uniting all the parts and provinces of France into one whole. 
But in Germany, independent of all artificial or conventional 
obstacles which the league may remove, there are natural obsta- 
cles which the league cannot remove, in the vast extent of terri- 
tory, and particularly in the sameness or identity of its natural 
products, to the exchange of industry for industry between the 
parts, and consequently to the existence of any bond of material 
interests common to and uniting all the parts. This is a defect 
which no league can remedy. The corn and timber growing 
populations, for instance, in the east or north of Germany, have no 
natural connection whatsoever with the manufacturing or wine 
growing populations in the west or south. The latter produce 
in sufficient abundance their own corn, timber, flax, and have no 
natural demand for the products of the former ; and the former 
can far more easily and profitably, and, therefore, more naturally, 
supply their wants of manufactured goods, or of wines, from 
England, Belgium, and France, which take in return the only 
products they have, corn, timber, flax, than from the provinces of 



142 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

Germany on the Rhine, or from Saxony or Silesia, by an expen- 
sive and uncertain land or river carriage, not open seven months 
in the year, and without retour carriage for the carriers, and 
without any reciprocal market for their own products. There 
is in reaUty no common interests between the parts to unite them 
into one country. They are one only in name, or, as in the 
Prussian dominions, in a political junction under one government, 
but have no real and natural union of material interests. The 
populations on the banks of the Thames and of the Ganges are 
much more efficiently and truly united into one nation by their 
material interests, than the populations on the Vistula or Niemen 
with those on the Rhine or Moselle. 

The history of the Germanic population down to the present 
days shows that no real principle of union, no community of 
material interests, has ever bound together any considerable mass 
of it into one whole, into one nation, with one common interest 
actuating all. The reasonable object of the league, therefore, is 
only attainable to a certain limited extent; and when it is attempted 
by protective duties, and custom-house cordons, to carry it beyond 
its natural bounds, and these are the interests of the consumers, 
one of two results will ensue ; either contraband trade will flourish, 
and Switzerland and Alsace will supply south-western Germany, 
France and Belgium north-western Germany, and England north- 
eastern Germany, just as before, only at a ruinous expense, and 
with the demoralizing consequences from smuggling to the body 
of consumers ; or contraband trade will be prevented by vigilant 
and costly means ; but one part of the country will be ruined for 
the benefit of another, from the simple and obvious cause, that 
the inhabitants, by the effect of the protective duties, are obliged 
to buy what they want from those who can buy nothing from 
them in return. If they had a free corn and timber trade to 
England, then indeed the inhabitants of the corn and timber pro- 
ducing countries of the north-east of Germany, which have no 
physical capability of becoming manufacturing countries, would 
have money to buy the manufactures forced upon them by pro- 
tective duties from the German manufacturing districts of the 
west. And this perhaps is the best argument against the aboli- 
tion of our corn and timber duties. The effect of the measure 
might possibly be— so long as the German states in the commer- 
cial league levy protective duties in favour of German manufac- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 143 

tures — merely to furnish money to supplant the products of our 
own manufacture in the continental markets. If we give a free 
trade in corn and timber, we ought, in this view of the question, 
to require in return a free trade in our manufactures to the corn 
supplying countries. 

The effects of forcing the people, by a system of protective 
duties, to buy in markets in which they cannot sell their own 
produce, and to supply themselves with v/hat they require from 
producers who can take nothing from them, make it doubtful 
whether, considering Germany as a whole, the manufactnring 
prosperity of the west be not more than counterbalanced by the 
depreciation of property in the east. The value of land in east 
Prussia is stated to have fallen two-thirds on an average, and in 
some places even four-fifths, within the last ten years. Important 
towns, such as Danzig and Elbing, are stated to be falling into 
decay, their shipping dismantled,'* their river trade to the interior 
gone. Elbing, a city which formerly liad considerable trade, and 
several public institutions, is stated to be so reduced that the town 
taxes cannot defray the expense of lighting the streets. The cases 
of sales sitb hasid, or judicial auctions for behoof of creditors be- 
fore the courts of law, are stated to amount to a yearly average of 
twelve thousand in one province. These circumstances are stated 
as statistical facts in an esteemed work, similar but superior to our 
Annual Register (Venturini's Chronik des 1.0 Jahrhunderls). 

This depression of the eastern agricultural provinces, while the 
western manufacturing provinces are flourishing, is in reality a 
see-saw of prosperity — the one end up, the other down — between 
two parts of an extensive country, which physically and practi- 
cally have no common interests, no advantageous interchange 
of productions with each other. The one part is unavoidably 
sacrificed to the other; and the advance in prosperity or national 
wealth of the two as a whole is a mere delusion, because natural 
circumstances, viz., identity of production and distance of trans- 
port by land or sea between the parts, allow no interchange of 
industry for industry, no common interests to grow up. 

Tlie German political economists, indeed, while they admit the 

* la 180.7-6 Prussia had 1J02 ships, cairying 1()G,8;)4 hists. In lS:5S-!» 
Prussia had 617 ships, carrying 78, Ui)7 hists, being a diminution in this l)ranch 
of industry in her Baltic ports of 485 ships, or of tonnage 28,797 lasts. — Knr's 
Organismus des Prcussischc7i Slaals. I'cdin, 1841. 



144 NOTES OF A TRAVEI^ER. 

depression in the east to be more than equivalent to the mannfac- 
tnring prosperity in the west of Germany, do not consider the one 
the cause of the other. They ascribe the depression to the policy 
of Russia, which has adopted and turned against Germany her 
own protective system, and attempts to raise Russian manufac- 
tures by prohibitive duties on foreign goods, and maintains a strict 
cordon of military custom-house guards upon her frontier, from 
the mouths of the Niemen up into Silesia. The case appears to 
be, that while the Baltic ports of Germany had British goods to 
deal with, they had, owing to the superiority of quality and finish, 
a considerable trade in them, as either legally, or by contraband 
means, such goods found their way into the Russian dominions; 
but having now only German manufactures to deal with, they 
have lost this home trade, because the Russians manufacture as 
good and cheap articles as the Germans in iron, and also in cotton 
and linen fabrics. The trade to Kiachta, also, on the Chinese 
frontier, formerly took coarse linen from Silesia to the value of 
eight or ten millions of thalers yearly. Russia now supplies this 
demand by her own manufacturing industry, and loads the Sile- 
sian linen with a duty equivalent to a total prohibition. German 
political economists complain of this; but they have no right to 
complain, for it is but the application of their own principle to 
Russian manufacturing industry. When the treaty of commerce 
between Prussia and Russia, which had existed since 1815, and 
expired on the 1st September, 1836, was to be renewed, the 
Prussian commissioner Westphal attempted in vain to obtain ad- 
mission for German manufactures, and a lower transit doty on 
Silesian linens intended for the Chinese market. It is matter of 
astonishment to German politicians accustomed to consider the 
personal will or relations of the sovereign as supreme in state 
affairs, that notwithstanding the personal friendship and near 
connection of the Prussian and Russian autocrats, no relaxation 
of this prohibitive system on the part of Russia could be obtained. 
The fact is, that the interests of the great nobility in Russia have 
some considerable control over the government. They carry on 
with their capitals the manufactm'es of Russia, especially those of 
iron and linen , and they consider it for their advantage to exclude 
the German and Silesian manufactures. The Austrian govern- 
ment, since the establishment of the league, acts on the same 
principle; and it may be questioned if German manufacturing 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 145 

industry has not lost more by losing these good, steady, extensive, 
and near, almost home markets, than gained by attempthig to 
force a foreign market. The foreign consumers appear not very 
ready to deal with those who cannot in return deal with them. 
The Prussian minister at Washington, M. Konne, made proposals 
for a treaty of commerce with the German league, and the Ame- 
rican government sent Mr. Wheaton to Berlin to inquire into and 
report upon the advantages to be derived by the United Slates 
from such a treaty. The advantages appeared to be all on one 
side. The league had advantages to receive from America, but 
none to give which American trade did not already enjoy in 
Europe. 

Artificial restrictions from the nature of the social economy and 
of the system of government in Germany, as well as the physical 
circumstances of the extent of the land, the sameness of its main 
productions, and consequent want of articles of interchange, pre- 
vent the rise of a great home market in the country. It is not 
only each province and town, but each family, generally speaking, 
of the population, that is a separate existence producing for its 
own consumpt all it uses, doing everything within itself, supply- 
ing its own wants by its own work, and giving little employment 
comparatively to others. This state of social economy can only 
be altered, if it be for the happiness of a community to exchange 
it for a commercial or manufacturing prosperity, by time and a 
radical change in the autocratic principle and military arrange- 
ment of the continental governments. Its effects on the objects 
for which the German league is established are adverse. It 
admits of no home market for the products of manufacturing 
industry, sufficiently extensive to employ the manufacturing capi- 
tal and population. These are obliged to force a trade with the 
foreign consumer, for, small as they are comparatively, they pro- 
duce more than the home market requires. It is a forced and 
unnatural trade, because to manufacture for the Mediterranean, 
or South or North American markets, without shipping, seaports, 
or commerce, and to depend upon political events and contingen- 
cies, in which Germany has not from her situation on the globe 
the power, if she had the right, to interfere, for her access to 
markets, and to the supply of raw material, is not a safe, sound, 
natural position for the trade and manufactures of a country. It 
is here that the imaginative writers in Germany on this custom- 



146 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

house union or commercial league mislead the public mind, and 
indulge in speculations and reveries altogether wild and imprac- 
ticable. They propose to constitute this league into an acknow- 
ledged political power in Europe, like the old Hanseatic league; 
to comprehend in it the old Hanstowns, Hamburg, Bremen, and 
Lubeck, and Belgium or Holland, or both, Hanover and Den- 
mark ; to have a fleet composed of the Dutch, and Danish, and 
Prussian ships of war, common revenues, a common flag ; to 
conclude treaties, colonize, and become one new, united, acknow- 
ledged European power.* The symbol always takes the place 
of the reality in the German mind ; and a flag has actually been 
devised for this power that is to be, and is even carried by some 
thirty or forty vessels, with all the quarterings, colours, and em- 
blems in it of all the powers from the Lake of Constance to the 
Baltic, who are joined in the German custom-house league. 
These newspaper dreams would be unworthy of notice, if they 
did not appear in a semi-official shape. The German newspapers 
are written for a very diflerent public from that of our papers — 
for the educated, the capitalist, and the functionary classes ; and 
being under censorship, either in their publication or in their 
admission to circulation by post, the political speculations which 
appear in them come with some degree of official authority. 
They are at least congenial to, if not the official expression of, 
the views of persons in power ; otherwise they would be sup- 
pressed either in the printing-house or the post-office. The go- 
vernments which exercise a censorship adopt as their own all 
that they permit to be published under their authority. These 
newspaper dreamers forget, in their political speculations, that the 
other European powers would tell the German powers united in 
the league, You are perfectly entitled to make such custom-house 
or commercial treaties between yourselves as regard your own 
interests; but when you raise fleets and armies and common 
revenues as one political power, you are disturbing the settled 
political balance of Europe ; you are either creating a new Euro- 
pean power on sea and land, in which your own political indi- 
viduality and existence are merged, and by which the existing 
political interests of other European powers are compromised, or 
you are increasing an existing power (Prussia, or Holland, or 
Denmark, or whatever the power may be which your league pro- 

* See the Augsburg Allgeraeine Zeitung; Septeraberj 1S41. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 147 

poses to place at its head), to an extent not contemplated at the 
general settlement of Europe in 1815, by the Congress of Vienna ; 
and are giving an augmentation of power to that one state — by 
treaty, instead of by conquest, but equally an augmentation of 
power, offleets, armies, revenues, and in fact territorial and political 
power to that one state — dangerous to her neighbours, and which 
the policy of the other European powers cannot permit. What- 
ever the continental powers might do, England would not permit 
the consolidation of one new naval power on the high seas, with 
a sea front round the Baltic and North sea from the Russian to 
the French frontier, with a population of thirty millions behind, 
with common revenues, a common flag, and all the commercial 
and belligerent shipping and naval means of the Baltic and Ger- 
man oceans united, at the disposal of the new European power. 
It might suit the policy of Russia or France to favour the esta- 
blishment of such a naval power, but no English ministry would 
permit the monopoly of the whole seaward side of the north of 
Europe in the hands of any one power, either in th^e shape and 
under the name of a German league, or under the name of any 
existing power. Such a league would be political, not commer- 
cial, and could not exist under the present political arrangements 
of Europe. England would dissolve it by the simple practical 
measure of capturing every vessel on the high seas sailing under 
a flag not known and acknowledged in the European system. 

But the extension of the German league to such political ob- 
jects as the German politicians dream of, is counteracted by the 
nature of the league itself. . It is essentially commercial ; the manu- 
facturing greatness which it proposes to obtain for Germany being 
based, not upon the home consumption, but upon the foreign 
markets. But those states which, like Holland, Denmark, Ham- 
burg, Bremen, are altogether commercial also, have no advantage, 
but the contrary to advantage, from being joined to a league which, 
by its protective duties and its objects as a league, would limit the 
supply in their markets of the articles required in their commerce 
or which the stranger buys from their citizens, to those manu- 
factured within the league; and which articles, with the greater 
expense of land transport on them to their ports, would be dearer 
as assortments to ship to Asia or America, than similar articles 
from Belgium or England. It is not to be supposed that volun- 
tarily these commercial states would join the league, because it is 



148 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

clearly not their interest to do so, and thereby to limit the supply 
of goods in their markets to one set of manufacturers, instead of 
having a competition on their own exchange from every manu- 
facturing .district in the world, to supply the demands of their 
commerce. Frankfort was coerced into a junction, clearly against 
her own interests as a free entrepot; but Frankfort had not aside 
open to the sea like Hamburg or Bremen, was surrounded by 
countries which had long exercised a right to levy duties on goods 
in transit to or from Frankfort, and it was a question rather of 
German than of European interest. But the political existence 
of the four free cities in the European system, Hamburg, Bre- 
men, Lubeck, and Frankfort, as independent states, was certainly 
given to them at the settlement of Europe by the Congress of 
Vienna, not in respect of their power or importance as states in 
the European system, but on the principle and understanding 
that these were to be free emporiums open to the trade of all 
countries on equal terms, and not to be shut up by any one power, 
or combination of powers, against the trade of all other powers. 
It was evidently to prevent this result that these ancient Hansea- 
tic towns were not incorporated with the adjoining states, but 
received an independent political existence. The coercion or 
accession of Fra,nkfort to the league is a manifest violation of the 
spirit and intent of the settlement of Europe by the Congress of 
Vienna, by which those Hanseatic markets were considered the 
free arena in which all European producers and consumers may 
meet, and buy, and sell, without partiality, control, or protecting 
duties in favour of one European pqwer more than another. 
Hamburg and Bremen are great mouths through which the com- 
merce of the world flows, and are of European and American, 
not, like Frankfort, of German importance only, and could not be 
shut up by other pov/ers, or even by their own power as a state, 
without a violation of the understood compact or principle on 
which alone they hold a political independent existence. Their 
own interests as commercial entrepots will always prevent those 
other states from voluntarily becoming parties in the league, and 
excluding all but German manufacturers from their markets ; and 
coercion cannot be applied to them as to Frankfort. They have 
allies directly interested in their commercial independence, and in 
the freedom of their markets, viz., the European and American 
states trading to their ports. As to the accession of Denmark, 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 149 

Hanover, Holland, or Belgium to the league, an insurmountable 
obstacle is the nationality of these countries, and their independ- 
ence, which would be sacrificed, as well as in the want of any 
interest to be promoted, or of any advantage to be gained as 
members of the league. These powers stand commercially with 
regard to the league in the same position as the United States of 
America, and would have no visible benefit from limiting theix 
commerce to the objects of the league, and placing themselves 
under the pupilage of the petty inland states of Germany in mat- 
ters of trade. 

The immense development of the consumpt of the British colo- 
nies and of the independent South American states since the last 
war, places England in a very different position of interests with the 
continent of P^urope from that.in which she stood when excluded 
by Buonaparte, by the Milan and Berlin decrees, from the conti- 
nental markets. She no longer depends on the European conti- 
nent for the consumpt of any vast proportion of the products of 
her manufacturing indtistry, while the Continent, manufacturing 
for her own and for over-sea markets, is becoming every day more 
and more politically dependent upon England for access to her 
supplies of raw materials, and to the markets for her manufactured 
goods. If political power, without regard to the principle of ex- 
isting political arrangements, were the object of a British govern- 
ment, the success of the German commercial league to the utmost 
extent of the most sanguine dreams of the German political writers 
on its results, would be the greatest accession to the political power 
of Britain over continental affairs that could be thrown into her 
lap. The whole of the material interests and productive industry 
of Germany united in one concern, and that one concern unable 
from its physical position to cross the ocean with its goods, or for 
its needful supplies of raw materials, but by the good will and 
sutlerance of that power which, from her physical position on the 
globe, commands all outlets and inlets, and holds the keys of the 
ocean, would form a preponderating British influence over Euro- 
pean affairs, increasing in political force exactly in proportion to 
the isolation of Great Britain. Suppose the extreme case, that 
the German commercial league could shut out British industry 
and capital altogether from the continental markets. Our export 
of goods to the north of Europe, to the amount at present, perhaps, 
of four or five millions sterling, would be reduced perhaps to a 



150 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

smuggling trade of two or three millions ; and Britain having no 
longer any important national interest at stake in her continental 
trade, having lost it, whatever may have been its importance, 
would take that polhical position which her natural position gives 
her; and when the united industry and capital of Germany were 
markets and supplies, and concluding treaties and equipping fleets 
consolidated into one new political power depending upon over-sea 
as an independent European power, like the Hanseatic league of 
old, Britain would demand a state of peace or a state of war with 
this new power, free access to markets, or the retaliation of shut- 
ting the sea doors of this new power with a few steamers. And 
who could say to her, Nay ? Britain would be justified on princi- 
ple. War against a commercial country does not consist merely 
in acts of violence and aggression on persons and property, but 
in acts of legislation and commercial arrangement more injurious 
to her interests than a war would be ; and therefore an English 
government would encounter a war, rather than endure a peace 
insidiously concealing all the evils of war in its effects. This 
would be the position of the British government with the German 
commercial league, supposing the wild and extravagant ideas of 
the German political writers on its results were realized: England 
being totally, and it is to be hoped finally, separated from all 
Hanoverian considerations or influences, stands on very different 
ground from her former position in her political negotiations, and 
would look only and entirely to British interests. 

But there are obstacles arising from the social condition of Ger- 
many itself, which will prevent even the sober, rational, and every 
way, and for every country, beneficial objects of the German 
commercial league from being attained for ages. These deserve 
consideration, for they proceed from arrangements in social and 
political economy altogether different from ours, and but little 
known to us. The dreams of German fleets and armies, and an 
united German nation, we may leave to the visionary politics 
which occupy the German newspaper writers from the want of 
real affairs to think of, or of freedom to discuss the real. 

In every country the home market is the great and steady basis 
of its manufacturing prosperity. Commerce itself, if it be not 
founded on a home consumpt, if it be merely a carrying trade 
between distant producers and distant consumers, has proved 
itself, as in the Hanstowns, in Genoa, Venice, Holland, to be mi- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 151 

Stable, evanescent, and unattended with any well-being or im- 
provement in the condition of the mass of the people. With all 
the colonies and commerce of England, her immense commercial 
capital, her unrivaled facilities for shipping and trade, her position 
in the ocean, and her free institutions open to all the trading capi- 
talists of the world, political economists tell us that more than 
two-thirds of our industrial products, not including agricultural 
products, but actually two-thirds of our manufactures, are used 
in our home consumpt, and one-third only is exported. In the 
agitation of the corn law question many different estimates, or 
conjectures, have been given of the amount and value of our foreign 
compared to our home market, according to the political views 
of the writers. In one point all the discordant statements agree — 
that the export trade is but the overflowings of the cup of our in- 
dustrial production, its fullness is all within its own rim. The 
late Mr. Macqueen, a statistical writer of no ordinary talent and 
industry, has given a detailed conjecture on the value of the goods 
produced and exported in 1834, viz. — *' 



Cotton goods 
Woolen goods 
Linen goods 
Silk goods - 
Leather goods 



Value of 
Goods produced. 


Value of 
Goods exported. 


£52,213,586 


£20,513,586 


44,250,000 


3,736,871 


15,421,186 


2,579.655 


13,425,510 


637,013 


18,000,000 


248.302 



Total £143,610,282 £29,715.430 



Of clothing materials, which are the main articles on which 
manufacturing labour is employed, it would appear from this 
view that about four-fifths of the ])roducts of our manufacturing 
industry are consumed in our home market, and one-fifth only is 
exported to the foreign market, including our colonial market. 
Of other manufactured articles produced and exported in 1834 
this estimate gives us of — 

Iron, cutlery, hardware, &c. 

Ikass and copper wares 

Wood, cabinet-work wares, paper, &c. 

Total 
and thus the home market for these exceeds still more the pro- 



Value of 
Goods produced. 
£38,170,600 


Value of 

Goods e.xporled. 

£2,269,437 


4,900,160 


961,809 


14,000,000 


377.911 


£.57,070,792 


.Ll.-Jn9,ISl 



152 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

portion consumed in the foreign market. According to the same 
political economist, the producing capital of Great Britain in 1836 
was, of agricultural 3,258,910,810/.; of manufactural 178,404,- 
278/.; of which only 16,381,322/. was employed in the produc- 
tion of manufactured goods for the foreign market. 

Such estimates or guesses are, in fact, but vague dreams, and 
often worse than dreams, because they come clothed in the garb 
of reality to support or demolish some theory. What can be 
more preposterous than to state such sums with an eight or ten 
pounds sterling at their tails, as if such matters could be ascer- 
tained as exactly as the amount of your tailor's bill ? This taste 
among statistical writers and political economists is reprehensible, 
because it imposes on weak minds, and gives an air of exactness 
to what is entitled to no such character. An approximation to 
amounts proportional to the exact is all that can be given or taken 
in such estimates. We may take from this view of our home 
market, be it correct to the exact proportion or not, that a people 
must be great consumers, as well as great producers, to be a 
great manufacturing people, and to attain to any great national 
wealth. There must be at home an exchange of industry for 
industry, a circulation of production and consumpt through every 
pore of the social body itself. What is merely exhaled and thrown 
off in export is not sufficient to keep up a healthy movement in a 
munufacturing nation. 

The German league comprehends above twenty-six millions 
of people ; and if we only look at the numbers and at the extent 
and fertility of the soil they occupy, they should be buyers in 
their home market of manufacturing industry, one would sup- 
pose, as extensively at least as our British twenty-four millions. 
But here we see the immense difference produced by a different 
social economy. These twenty-six millions consume less of each 
other's industry, employ less, buy less, sell less, than four millions 
of our population. In our social system every man buys all he 
uses, and sells all he produces ; there is a perpetual exchange of 
industry for industry. A home-spun and home-woven shirt, jacket, 
and trowsers, would certainly not be found with us upon the body 
of one labouring man in forty thousand. All he wears, all he eats, 
all he drinks, must be produced for him by the industry of others, 
and bought by the price of his own industry. The very bread 
of our labourers in husbandry is often bought at the manufac- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 153 

turer's shop. In Germany the economy of society is directly the 
reverse; not one labouring man, farmer, or tradesman pretty 
high up even in the middle class of the small towns, uses in 
clothing, food, furniture, what is not produced at home by his 
own family. In the centre even of German manufacturing in- 
dustry, in the provinces on the Rhine, you will not see among 
twenty labouring people the value of twenty shillings altogether 
in clothing articles not produced at home by the application of 
their own time, labour, and industry. They are not badly clothed, 
but on the contrary, as well, if not better, than our own labourers 
— in very good shirts, good jackets, trowscrs, stockings, shoes, and 
caps; but all home-made, or at the utmost village-made — not 
made by a class of manufacturers doing no other work, and 
bought with the wearer's money. These are not consumers for 
whose demands the operative labours, and the master manufac- 
turer and mechanician invent, calculate, and combine. Tobacco, 
coffee, sugar, wine, and spirits, cotton yarns for home weaving, and 
dye-stuffs for home-made cloth, take a large proportion of what 
these twenty-six millions of people have to expend in foreign 
articles. It is little, comparatively, they have to expend, because 
much of their time and labour is applied to the direct production 
and manufacturing of what they use ; much, a great deal more 
than with us, goes in eating, drinking, cooking, social enjoyment, 
and in fuel preparing, and such small household work in which 
there are no earnings or reproduction ; and, above all, much of the 
workman's means of earning, much of his time, labour, and pro- 
ductiveness, is taken by the government in the shape of military 
and other duties from the working man. The small proprietors 
occupying and living from the land have no surplus earnings to 
lay out in products of manufacturing industry. Having the rude 
necessaries of life very much within themselves, they are not 
forced into the market by any necessity; and being bred in the 
rough simplicity of the connnon soldier's life at the age when a 
man's tastes and habits are forming, they have no very refined 
indulgences or tastes to gratify, no habits or usages of a mode of 
living requiring the aid of much manufacturing industry. It is 
more dillicult, perhaps, to bring a nation to consume, than to pro- 
duce. 

It is the opinion of some of our most eminent political econo- 
mists, of Mr. Jacob, Dr. Bowring, and other able writers, wiio 
11 



154 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

have enjoyed the best opportunities of becoming correctly and 
officially acquainted with the state of the Continent, and from 
whose opinions, therefore, the ordinary traveller dissents with 
great diffidence, that the abolition of our corn laws will make 
these twenty-six millions of people whose industrial product, corn, 
we would purchase, become in return great consumers of our in- 
dustrial product — manufactured goods. This is a delusion of 
these distinguished political economists, arising from their apply- 
ing ideas taken from our English social economy, state of pro- 
perty and of labour, to a state and system of society existing on 
totally different principles. The mass of those twenty-six mil- 
Hons having, each family within itself, land, labour, leisure, and 
the inveterate custom to provide their own food, clothing, neces- 
saries, and luxuries by their own work, and being moreover 
during the winter half-year under the physical impossibility of 
doing any regular out-door agricultural work, would spin, weave, 
and clothe themselves by their own household industry as before, 
and buy no more of our manufactures than they do now. A 
change in those habits of a people which are rooted in their 
social economy, in the distribution of their property, the occupa- 
tion of their soil, the nature of their country and climate, the in- 
stitutions and arrangements of their governments, cannot be pro- 
duced by any influences from without. A very small proportion, 
also, of the corn exported from Germany to the British marliet is, 
by Mr. Jacob's own account, the produce of those German pro- 
vinces which are manufacturing countries, or have any physical 
capability of ever becoming so. The provinces and countries on 
the Rhine, Westphalia, and also Saxon Prussia, and Silesia, send 
us little or no corn ; and owing to the want of cross-country roads, 
a considerable demand for grain for shipment in one quarter 
affects but slightly the value of grain at a very small distance 
beyond. It is quite unreasonable to suppose that they would 
take our manufactures to the prejudice of their own, because we 
take corn from the banks of the Vistula ; a country with which 
they have no natural community of interests ; with which they 
have no connectionj unless on paper — on the state paper, in which 
they are handed over to the same crown, — and with which they 
have actually less intercourse than we have ourselves. These 
distinguished political economists err here, by applying English 
ideas of the community of interests which exists in our small land 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 155 

bound up into one whole by the rapidity and freedom of commu- 
nication over it, and which makes the sacrifice of the interests of 
a part to the general good a clear and acknowledged benefit, to 
countries of such vast extent, and with such httle communication, 
and so few objects of mutual supply of interchange, that the parts 
are separate existences physically and politically. The parts of 
the Prussian empire have less community of interests, less inter- 
course with each other, are less cemented together into a whole, 
than Bengal and Middlesex. Quebec and Greenock are much 
more united parts of one social whole, as members of one empire, 
than Danzick and Cologne. It would be sacrificing one part to 
another part, and not to a whole, to apply to their political eco- 
nomy a principle which is quite good in our compact city-like 
empire. If it were the true interest of Prussia, which it is not, 
to sacrifice her richest and most improving provinces on the 
Rhine with manufacturing capabilities, capital, and enterprise, to 
her poor agricultural provinces on the Baltic, her government 
would not have the power to do so. Her Rhenish and West- 
phalian provinces are not only wealthy and manufacturing ; they 
are liberal, and hang but very loosely to the autocratic principle 
of the Prussian government. They retained, when they were 
handed over to Prussia, their former laws and law courts — the 
Code Napoleon, Code de Commerce, Code de Procedure Civile, 
Code Criminel — and have nothing in their laws' or courts in com- 
mon with the rest of Prussia ; suffered no revival or intrusion of 
the old feudal or the Prussian jurisprudence and tribunals, and 
have very clearly indicated that they would not suffer it. They 
have shown, in their support of the Catholic Bishop of Cologne 
arising evidently not from a blind spirit of flinaticism, but from a 
spirit of opposition to despotic sway, that they are not a popula- 
tion to be governed, like military serfs, by the will or caprice of a 
cabinet. It is from this population, of about 4,000,000 that the 
impulse has been given to the great movement of the German 
people in the German league. They arc in no way interested in 
the corn trade to England, nor would they suffer their material 
interests and manufacturers to be sacrificed to the trade of Dan- 
zick, and to the agricultural interests of the old or new Prussian 
provinces on the Baltic. They have France at their elbow. 
Bavaria, Wirtenburg, Saxony, Hesse, and the other states joined 
in the league, have also no interest whatever in such a reciprocity 



156 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

as receiving our manufactured goods on a low duty, if we take 
corn on a low duty from the Polish provinces of Prussia, with 
which they have no cannection. Their joint population equals 
that of Prussia ; and in the affairs of the league, each has a voice 
^qual to that of Prussia. Prussia is bound to common measures 
with the other states of the league, and could not enter into such 
a reciprocity with us without abandoning the league she has 
formed, and abandoning the interests of her own manufacturing 
provinces on the Rhine, which, with France at their elbow, with 
French laws and French ideas on civil and political rights, and 
constitutional representation of the people, are not to be treated 
despotically in arrangements touching their material interests. 
Mr. Jacob, Dr. Bowring, or whoever holds out this argument or 
inducement for the abolition of our corn laws, must have heard 
ill, or from incompetent authority, that such a reciprocity ever 
would have been listened to for a moment by the powers en- 
gaged in the German league, or that the Prussian government, 
even if not bound to common measures with them, would find it 
her interest to adopt such a reciprocity, were it in her power to 
adopt it, to the injury, real or supposed, of her own manufactu- 
ring Rhenish, Westphalian, and Saxon provinces. 

If a manufacturing interest and spirit can be diff'used over Ger- 
many, it must be founded on a consuming population at home, as 
well as on a body of producers and capitalists; and all Europe 
would then be in a more sound social condition. Such a popula- 
tion would even be better customers to British industry, more 
ready to exchange industry for industry with us, and more able 
to do so, than the present agricultural, self-supplying, or non- 
consuming population. But this change from non-consuming to 
consuming habits is opposed in its growth by the very govern- 
ments which are the most anxious to establish a flourishing indus- 
trial interest in Germany. They would have the fruit, without 
the tree on which it grows. The military system of the German 
governments engenders a spirit of interference, not only with the 
labouring class of the community, preventing the free circulation 
of labour, and the acquisition of steady, expert, quick-working 
habits, but with all circulation, business, and employment. It 
enters into, and attempts to direct all industrial action. The 
capitalist and his operatives work as in a barrack yard, under the 
eye, influence, and superintendence of government functionaries. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 157 

As an instance of this kind of interference, even in manufacturing 
Prussia, if a master manufacturer or wholesale dealer has to send 
a box or parcel to a customer or shop-keeper at a distance, he 
cannot choose the cheapest way by a carrier taking goods along 
the road at the lowest rate to which a free and open competition 
can bring down the expense of carriage : government thinks 
proper to be the universal parcel carrier as well as letter carrier, 
and to monopolize this branch of industry. Plis parcel must be 
inspected, valued, packed, and sealed to the satisfaction of the 
public functionary, and in his presence ; and the formalities, loss 
of time, and interference, are such as no free competition trade 
can exist under, and no home market, and habits of exchanging 
industry for industry among the people, can grow up under. 

Dr. Nebenius, a great statistical authority, reckons,* or rather 
guesses from such imperfect data as the subject affords, that the 
yearly consumption of woollen goods per head of the individuals 
within the German league, is a-bout forty per cent, less than that 
of each individual, on an average, in the British population ; and 
of cotton, he reckons the home consumption of England and 
Scotland at sixty-four millions of pounds weight, and of the popu- 
lation of the whole German union, which is greater by seven or 
eight millions than that of the island of Great Britain, at five 
millions and a quarter. Another great statistical authority, M. 
Dieterici, estimates that in Prussia, certainly the most consuming 
portion of the population within the league, the consumption of 
each person, on an average, of woollen cloth yearly, is 1-56 yard ; 
and in the United Kingdom, on the same data, 4-2 yards : and of 
cotton twist consumed in the Union in 1S3G, the quantity was 
forty-nine millions pounds; and two hundred and fifty-three 
millions in the United Kingdom. But in comparing the respect- 
ive consumption of the two masses of population, these distin- 
guished political economists overlook the most important clement 
in it, viz., the amount of industry, and of the exchange of indus- 
try for industry, which this consumption of clothing, or clothing 
material, be it greater or less than they so vaguely guess, brings 
into movement among these two masses of population. In our 
mass of population, every pound weight of this wool, or cotton, 
or cotton twist, every yard of this cloth, sets agoing, 1st, an indus- 

* Der Deutsche Zollverein, sein System und seine Zukunft. Von Dr. C. J. 
Nebenius. Carlsruhe, 1835. 



158 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

try or capital to grow it, or bring it home from the grower; Sdly, 
an industry or capital to manufacture it, to prepare it for use, and 
bring it to market for sale ; 3dly, an industry or capital to earn 
the means, by producing and selling its own products, to buy it 
for wearing apparel. In our social economy, everything that 
man uses sets agoing these three industries. But in the social 
economy of Germany, the grower of the wool, or the first buyer 
of the cotton twist, is himself, very generally, the manufacturer 
and the consumer also. The same labour and time, or probably 
a great deal more, may have been employed by him and his 
household in bringing the raw material into the state of cloth, as 
if it had been spun, woven, and dyed by the different classes of 
manufacturers who prepare cloth with us, and had come into the 
village shop through all the intermediate ramifications of employ- 
ment which vivify a home market. But there has been no ex- 
change of industry for industry in this state of social economy 
among the mass of a population ; no reciprocal employment, no 
mutual and civilizing working of individuals for each other's 
wants, in this process of bringing the wool from the sheep's back, 
and putting it upon the back of the German peasant in the shape 
of a home-made cloth coat, compared to that produced in the 
process of putting a new coat upon one of our labouring men, 
who, of necessity, and by the nature of our social economy must 
buy all he wants, and sell all he produces ; must exchange indus- 
try for industry, and who spends not an hour of his life in pro- 
ducing for his own consumption. Until such a home market is 
gradually raised, it is a dangerous speculation in social economy 
to call into existence a body of operatives, and an industrial inte- 
rest, depending almost altogether upon a foreign demand. This 
can do no more than raise in a few districts a sickly manufacturing 
industry fostered with custom-house care, and depending upon a 
foreign market ; until at last a great body of operatives is reared, 
who, having no real home consumption for the products of their 
industry to fall back upon, and no hired agricultural labour, or 
temporary job-work in other employments, or free access to other 
trades or localities than their own to fall back upon, and no colo- 
nies or standing army to absorb them, will be reduced to unex- 
ampled distress, in the event of war intercepting the transport of 
their manufactured goods to the foreign market, or of their regular 
supply, from over sea, of the raw materials ; or if the abolition of 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 159 

the English corn laws should, as expected, deluge all markets 
with goods still more cheaply produced by England than at pre- 
sent. Germany manufactures for the foreign market only by 
sufferance from political contingencies over which she has no 
control. What would, for instance, be the condition of the work- 
ing population in the cotton factories of Prussia, Saxony, or Swit- 
zerland, in the event of a war between England and the United 
States, or England and France? Their supplies of raw material 
would be suddenly arrested by the blockade of the ports from 
which they come, or by which they enter. This mass of manu- 
facturing population would at once be thrown out of employment, 
without a refuge at home or abroad from utter destitution. It is 
evidently a false policy for the States of the German league, to 
call into existence a mass of manufacturing population depending 
for bread upon the foreign markets for their products ; which 
markets are altogether beyond their power or political influence, 
and may be cut oft' by any naval belligerent, without their having 
the means to prevent it, or even the right to complain. 

If the German commercial league propose to raise a home 
market in Germany itself, the habits of the people, the restraints 
upon their perfect freedom of action, the military organization of 
the country must be altered. The whole social system will have 
to be altered ; the armies of civil functionaries, together with 
almost all their duties, abolished ; and society left to itself by the 
German governments, to the uncontrolled, untrammelled use of 
time, property, and individual action, as in the United States, in 
England, in Switzerland, in every country that has made any 
advance in national prosperity. A change so entire in the social 
economy of a people cannot be effected in a generation or two. 
Germany now, as a country only beginning to have commerce 
and industry, and to leave the simple state of every family enjoy- 
ing a rough plenty, but producing almost all it consumes within 
itself, is standing on nearly the same point as England did in the 
reign of Queen Elizabeth. Then, in England, as now in Ger- 
many, every family in the middle or lower classes was employed 
in spinning, weaving, manufacturing for itself, baking, brewing 
pickling, preserving, for its own consumption. It has taken three 
centuries to bring the British population to that social economy in 
which every man exchanges industry for industry, and a vast 
home market exists for all production. It may be doubted, how- 



160 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

ever much England has gained in national or individual wealth, 
whether her population Tias gained in well-being and social happi- 
ness by the change. Her operative manufacturing population 
called into existence by it, although only one-fifth of their numbers 
are supposed to be employed in supplying the foreign market, are 
plunged sufficiently often into the deepest distress by the ordinary 
vicissitudes of the home market, to make reflecting men pause, 
and ask if this be prosperity ? if national wealth, or the power of a 
state in its financial means ; if the individual enjoyriient of the 
luxuries and gratifications which this wealth bestows on one rich 
class, be worth the amount of human misery and vice accompany- 
ing it? But to attempt to skip over a home market for a manu- 
facturing population to fall back upon, and to call into existence 
prematurely a mass of operatives depending entirely upon a foreign 
market, cannot be wise policy. The first gust of war will sweep 
the whole fabric from the face of the earth. The German com- 
mercial league will have to study the career of England more 
carefully, and not begin at the wrong end, at establishing a foreign 
market, before she has a home market for her productive industry. 
Many regard the German commercial league as inimical to 
British interests. This view is as erroneous as it is narrow. The 
richer our neighbours become, the better customers they are to us. 
The German commercial league has been in full operation, since 
1833, over a population of 25,608,864 individuals. If we look at 
its practical effects upon British industry and commerce, since and 
before that date, we are warranted in the conclusion, that the 
wealthier and the more industrious our neighbours become, the 
better customers they are in the world's markets, in supplying 
which British industry and capital are embarked. Every chandler 
comes to a similar conclusion on the little circle of customers in 
the alley in which his shop is situated, and believes that his trade 
will increase just in proportion as his neighbours thrive. 

In 1829, four years before the full operation of the German com- 
mercial league, the declared value of British produce and manu- 
factures exported from the United Kingdom to Germany, was £4,662,566 

As Holland and Belgium take British goods which pass ultimately 
into Germany, we add the value exported to those countries in 
the same year, viz. ...... 2,050,014 

The 25,000,000 of our German customers bought in 1829 to the ) £g 7,0 580 
value of - - - - - - - i ' ' 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 161 

In 1837, four years after the same epoch of 1833, the declared 

value of our goods exported to Germany was - - £5,029.552 

And to Belgium and Holland together - - - 3,844,946 



So that our 25,000,000 of Gerijian customers bought for - £8,874,498 

after four years' thriving, and growing rich, and consuming, by 
their commercial league. In 1S39, six years after the estabUsh- 
ment of the league, with all its protections of German industry, 
the declared value of British produce and manufactures export- 
ed to Germany was 5,422,021/.; and to Belgium and Holland, 
4,445,623/., being together 9,867,644/., or an increase of about one- 
third since 1829, or of about one-eighth since 1837. But in what 
produce or manufactures of Britain has this increasing sale to 
Germans been ? in raw goods to be manufactured by their indus- 
try, or in manufactures which have received the last finish from 
British industry ? Let us see. In 1829 the declared value of 
woollen manufactures, exclusive of yarns, exported to Germany, 
was 613,812/. ; in 1837 it was 725,699/. ; in 1839 it was 817,250/. 
Now wool itself is a German product. The raw material is in 
the country ; and although, no doubt, the manufacture of it is 
improving and extending, the consumption and demand for what 
we manufacture are also extending. The home market of Ger- 
many is not fully supplied by her own home industry with all 
she consumes of an article grown at home. In cotton manufac- 
tures there is a greater difference, but none of important magni- 
tude, between the kinds and quantities exported to Germany 
before and after the full establishment of the German commercial 
league. In 1829 the number of yards of woven cotton goods 
exported from Britain to Germany was 41,037,377 yards; in 1837 
the number was 43,171,229 yards ; in 1839 the number was 38,- 
910,025 yards. In the ten years from 1829 and 1839 inclusive, 
the quantity of woven cotton cloths exported each year has ex- 
ceeded the quantity of 1829, excepting in three years, 1836, 1838, 
and 1839 ; and the excess has been as much as ten millions of 
yards, as in 1832 and 1834, while the dimiimtion of export, as in 
1836,.has never been more than three and a half millions. These 
appear, therefore, to be the ordinary fluctuations of trade in a 
steadily increasing market, viewed through a series of years, for 
our woven cotton manufactures. For our spun but not woven 
cotton manufactures, our cotton twist, the demand undoubtedly 



162 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

seems increased. In 1829 the number of pounds weight of yarns 
exported to Germany from the United Kingdom was 24,098,301 
lbs.; in 1837 it was 34,277,531 lbs.; in 1839 it was 38,712,355 
lbs. There appears in the ten years, 1829, 1839, a steadily in- 
creasing export of cotton twist which has only employed British 
industry in the first stage of its manufacture, viz., in the spinning, 
and is woven by the German manufacturer. But it is a great 
mistake to imagine that this British cotton twist goes altogether 
to the weaving factories of foreign manufacturers, who re-export 
it, or bring it to market in competition with British woven cotton 
goods. A great proportion of it is for the family weaving of the 
people themselves into mixed cloths and stuffs for household use; 
by which the peasant finds a saving of the saleable products, flax 
and wool, from which alone he formerly manufactured all his 
family clothing, sheets, and household stuffs. The British demand 
for fine wool and for flax from the Continent, to be re-exported in 
cloth or yarns, necessarily causes a vacuity in the mass of the 
former clothing materials of the Continent, which is filled up by 
cotton yarn from England. 

The legislators and political economists who labour under the 
monopolist's ague, and shake at the idea of our neighbours grow- 
ing rich as well as ourselves by manufacturing industry, may see, 
even from this statement, that the richer they grow the better for 
us. They do not burn or bury their wealth. They lay it out ; 
those who get it lay it out again. It goes round and round, aug- 
menting the means and industry of men, widening the markets 
of the world, increasing the number of producers and consumers, 
and the wealth of all. 

A flourishing industrial interest upon a stable foundation among 
twenty-six millions of German people, would be the most import- 
ant advance ever made in modern society ; and would be a bond 
of peace secured by the people themselves on the very theatre 
which their rulers have deluged with blood for eighteen centuries. 
It would be a singular circumstance if the sword of war should 
be wrested from the hands of autocratic sovereigns by this union 
of the continental people for their material interests. It is not 
anticipating too much from it to believe that irresponsible cabi- 
nets, governments without a constitution, monarchs without a 
check, military interference in private civil affairs, restraint on 
free agency and industry, and a want of legislative representa- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 163 

tion, cannot exist by the side of sucli an interest. It is even now 
a mass of power in the hands of the people, which must be re- 
presented. The whole policy of the Prussian government is 
singularly at variance with the natural and obvious tendency of 
the German commercial league. To delay, to avoid, to refuse 
any representation of the people in the legislation of the country, 
yet to plant and foster an interest which, if it is to prosper at all, 
must have a voice in public affairs ; to establish a military system 
inconsistent with the manufacturing industry of the working class, 
a system of functionarism adverse to the application of the middle 
class to the arts of industry for their living^ a system of interfer- 
ence and surveillance inconsistent with the free development of 
the capital, enterprise, and mind of the wealthier class, are con- 
tradictions in policy only to be accounted for by supposing that 
the Prussian government did not foresee that the league was to be- 
come of such importance — was to be, what it now is, the union 
point of the German people ; and had not considered that this 
new state power in Germany, as it may be called, must neces- 
sarily extinguish the military principle of the sole irresponsible 
government of the monarch. 

The great errror, at present, of the Germans with regard to the 
commercial league, is that before alluded to — that they are looking 
too much to the results of a foreign trade, and overlooking too 
much the necessity of a previously formed home market and con- 
sumption. The branches of the national prosperity of England 
which naturally strike the eye of a foreigner are her ships, colo- 
nies, and commerce. He forgets, or does not see, that these are 
but the overflowings of a well of industrial wealth, which has its 
main springs at home. These are but the leaves and flowers of 
a tree which is rooted in her home social economy. The perfect 
freedom of circulation of industry in Britain, the consuming and 
producing habits of the people among themselves, the Macadam- 
ized roads to every village, the total absence of any restriction upon 
the internal communications and movements of man or goods, 
have, in the course of ages, raised a social economy in which every 
man exchanges industry for industry with his neighbours, is a 
producer and a consumer in a vast home market. If we look at 
Germany at present, even in the most advanced districts, how far 
behind is she in all these essential foundations of national pros- 
perity ! The common man cannot move from village to village 



164 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

in prosecution of his trade, or in search of work, without leave 
and license ; cannot open a shop, or exercise a business in many- 
parts of the Continent, or transport himself and his goods where or 
how he will, cannot produce, and cannot consume, but under au- 
thority and leave. In the neighbourhood even of such great seats 
of commercial wealth as Hamburgh, Frankfort, Leipsic, the cross- 
country roads are scarcely passable, although leading to consider- 
able masses of population. You see no carriers' carts or wagons 
conveying goods from the producers to the consumers. In the 
villages, you see the people in wooden shoes, in home-made 
woUen, cotton, or Unen clothing : and in the small town shops, 
you see either the raw unwrought articles for the family consump- 
tion or home manufacture of the labouring class, such as coffee, 
sugar, tobacco, dye stuffs, yarns ; or you see gilded ornaments, 
prints, mirrors, and such expensive articles for the highest class. 
You see nothing that betokens a great consuming middle class, or 
a great consuming labouring class buying every article they con- 
sume, fully prepared for their use, and selling all the product of 
their own time and labour to supply themselves with all they 
want. In such considerable towns, even in the most fertile parts 
of Germany, as Gotha, Dessau, Wittenburg, you see no indication 
of a great consuming class, or of a great interchange of industry 
for industry among the mass of the people. In Frankfort and 
Leipsic, even out of fair-time, you see, no doubt, proofs of great 
commercial wealth, of many hundreds of great capitalists dwell- 
ing there with their equipages and attendants ; but they dwell 
there like the English at a watering place, altogether uninfluen- 
tially, except to the extent of the expenditure of their incomes, 
upon the industry and prosperity of the mass of the population 
around them. They merely transmit, they do not produce, and 
employ but little labour, except it may be in transport, at parti- 
cular seasons. This commercial prosperity, as in Holland, Venice, 
and in the Hans Towns, may be very great, without adding very 
greatly to the well-being, industry, or national wealth of the com- 
munity. It is to this commercial prosperity, not to industrial pros- 
perity, that the attention of the Germans is directed at the present 
moment, in their expectations from the commercial league. Thqy 
seem in general to have the idea that national wealth consists in the 
number of great capitalists in a country, and not in the productive 
industry of the people ; and that if by foreign trade they can facil- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 165 

itate the augmentation of the number of great capitalists, they 
shall have attained great national prosperity. But great capital, 
either in the hands of a few or of many, must, in any sound state 
of social economy, be the effects, the products, of the productive 
industry of the people, and actmg as a cause as well as an effect 
of that industry. If it be not founded on this basis, it adds little 
or nothing to the real prosperity or national wealth of the coun- 
try. Baron Rothschild, probably in the course of a year, passes 
through his hands on the Exchange of Frankfort, as large an 
amount of capital as the town and its territory would sell for ; but 
this adds nothing to the national wealth or prosperity of Frank- 
fort. It employs no industry but the postman's. The manufac- 
turer, on the smallest scale, in an English town, who is every 
hour producing, and selling, and transporting, and every year 
calling into existence new habitations, new villages, new com- 
munications, new roads, devising new outlets, adopting new 
operations in his works, giving new employment to his workmen, 
is adding much more to the national wealth with comparatively 
very small capital. The Germans wish to begin building their 
house from the top downwards, instead of from the foundation 
upwards. 

The railroads, from which the Germans promise themselves 
exaggerated and imaginary advantages, belong to the objects for 
which Germany perhaps is not yet ripe as an industrial commu- 
nity. All her cross-country roads, and a great portion of her main 
roads between her most important cities, are in a wretched state, 
scarcely passable, and roads are altogether wanting through dis- 
tricts where roads should be. The extent of the country is itself 
a natural impediment to the multiplication and goodness of roads. 
The difficulties thrown in the way of communication from place 
to place by the passport system, and the town-duty system, and 
the monopoly by the governments in a great part of Germany of 
posting trade, coaching trade, parcel carrying trade, in short of 
all transport over the roads, reduce all internal traffic to the mini- 
mum amount with which society can exist. It is of little import- 
ance to get from Frankfort to Mayence, or from Leipsic to Dres- 
den, on a railroad, if all the veins and arteries which should feed 
this railroad are shut up, and choked with mire and sand. The 
want of roads, and of free traffic and competition on such roads 
as are, will long retard any considerable development of industry 



166 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

in Germany, and the formation of that home market, that mutual 
exchange among men of the products of their industry, which 
exists from the faciUty and cheapness of transport and supply. 
Railroads may even do more harm than good, in the present state 
of Germany, to her industrial progress in general, by absorbing 
that capital of governments, or individuals, which would have 
been applied, with more advantage, to improving the old main 
roads, and opening up new ; to laying that foundation of trans- 
port and communication through every district of a country, upon 
which alone, commercially speaking, railroads can subsist. A 
railroad is like a horse, very profitable and enriching to the indi- 
vidual who keeps him, provided there is plenty of productive 
labour for the horse to do ; but very unprofitable, and impoverish- 
ing, if the individual has no work for his horse but to drive about 
on him for curiosity or pleasure. It is still an undetermined 
question whether railroads can be used with advantage for the 
conveyance generally of goods. Such valuable goods in small 
compass, as may be sent from Manchester to Liverpool, or from 
Birmingham to London, afford no rule to judge by, the cost of 
carriage being trifling compared to the value of the package. 
But can the manufacturer not seated immediately on a railroad, 
transport his coals, his bricks, his lime, his timber, his iron, and 
all his bulky machinery and raw materials, with advantage on 
railroads ? He is seldom in a pressing hurry for these, but sees 
beforehand for some time what he wants of such materials or 
means, so that speed in their transport is no object, but cheap- 
ness is ; and if the railroad cannot transport them cheaper, he will 
prefer the common road, because he has no reloading them to 
bring them to the spot where they are required. This practical 
question is not yet determined in England ; but evidently the 
railroad can only aid, and not supersede the use of good roads ; 
and is itself comparatively valueless to a country, unless it is fed 
by a system of good roads all around, and free trade and compe- 
tition of transport on them. The most enlightened commercial 
men you meet with in Germany seem not a little fanciful in talk- 
ing of the vast commerce, and industrial prosperity, to be founded 
on railroad communications. The transport of passengers on 
their pleasure tours in summer, and to and from the watering 
places, is the only business at present on the railroads; and how- 
ever useful and profitable to the shareholders the amount of this 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 167 

transport may be— and from the nature of the country, the Ger- 
man railroads have cost the shareholders very little, compared to 
the usual expense of construction — it adds but little to the internal 
trade and industry of the country in general, or even of the towns 
it runs through. It is not, as in England with her railroads, an 
addition to the facilities which harbours, docks, shipping, a net- 
work of admirable main and cross-country roads spread over the 
land, and an unrestricted unquestionable freedom of movement 
on them for man and goods, give to industry ; but here the rail- 
road is to be a substitute for, instead of an addition to, all these 
preliminary steps to a high national state of industry and wealth. 
This will end in disappointment ; and the rational and attainable 
objects of the German commercial league, the supply of their own 
wants by their own industry in the first place, be defeated by 
straining after objects not attainable — such as a great manufac- 
turing for a foreign trade, without sea-ports, shipping, or secure 
access to the foreign markets — and not desirable, if attainable by 
forced efi'orts and encouragement, until they spring naturally from 
the overflowings of a great home market for the products of their 
manufacturing industry. 

It is by raising the condition of the people— their civil and po- 
litical condition, by removing all the trammels of the military and 
functionary system upon their personal freedom of action and 
industry, and by the establishment not only of roads, but of free 
transport and competition of individual industry on them without 
any kind of government interference, that the true objects of the 
German league must be obtained. A hundred Frankforts or 
Leipsics in Germany would not spread wealth and national pros- 
perity ; for look at the country a couple of miles from the gates 
of either of these cities, and you find the roads as impassable, the 
country people as non-consuming and non-exchanging, and in- 
dustry as dead, as if these cities had no existence. It is a change 
in the social economy of Germany that is needed, more than an 
increase of her class of capitalists. If they arc already driven to 
manufacture for the foreign consumer, before the home consumers 
are half supplied with what they might consume, it is clear there 
is something unsound in the project of beginning to build the 
national prosperity of Germany under the commercial league, 
upon a basis which is without and not within the country. Such 
a change in the social economy of 26 millions of people who have 



168 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

but one principle at present in common — that of producing as 
much of what they consume individually, by their own time and 
labour, and buying as Kttle of it as possible, — is not to be accom- 
plished suddenly. It must be the gradual operation of time, of 
unrestricted intercourse among men, and of civil and political 
liberty, as it has been in England. The German commercial 
league, if carried on with the haste, and to the extent, and for the 
objects which the excited minds of even prudent people in Ger- 
many call for, and are eager to rush into, will prove a delusion as 
ruinous as the Mississippi scheme, as devoid of any solid basis, 
and which the first blast of war will dissolve. 

According to every true German, the league is to be the grand 
restorer of nationality to Germany, of national character, of na- 
tional mind, national greatness, national everything, to a new, 
regenerated German nation. They are to spin and weave them- 
selves into national spirit, patriotism, and united eifort as one great 
people. They are to have colonies, if a continent can be disco- 
vered for them to colonize— an independent flag for their commer- 
cial league, if the naval powers agree to recognize a nonentity as 
an effective neutral power on the high seas — and a navy, too, if 
the Rhine would breed seaman, and Cologne build ships of the 
line, instead of a dozen or two of river barges. These are inno- 
cent evaporations of a foggy atmosphere of mind often found 
among Germans, through which small things appear great, and 
ideas are taken for realities. Yet the most sensible of the news- 
paper editors of Germany lend their columns to such day-dreams. 
The stern reality amidst these childish fancies of the German 
patriots who ever look to the ideal future, and never to the real 
present, is, that at no period in modern history have the civil 
rights and free agency of men in their moral, religious, and in- 
dustrial relations been more entirely set aside in Germany — at no 
period have their time and labour been taken from them by go- 
vernments and local authorities so uselessly and unreproductively 
for the people, as since the conclusion of the last war. While 
all that forms the spirit, independent feeling, and moral existence 
of a nation, and all that forms the wealth and industrial pros- 
perity of a nation, are kept down by military organization and 
interference by edictal law, regulations, and functionarism, to a 
kind of Chinese state of society, German writers dream of na- 
tional independence, national spirit, national action in European 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 169 

affairs, for the German population. The emancipated negro popu- 
lation in our West India colonies enjoy in reality more civil and 
political rights, more free agency, as moral beings, in their reli- 
gious, social, and domestic relations — have their time and labour 
more entirely to themselves, and at their own free disposal with- 
out the interference of government through its civil or military 
functionaries, than the great mass of the labouring class in Ger- 
many. The German commercial league may produce a decided 
alteration in this abject social state ; but it begins at the wrong 
end with its renovation of Germany, if it only encourages the 
increase of a body of commercial or manufacturing capitalists, on 
the one hand, supplying the foreign consumer, and a mass of help- 
less operatives, on the other hand, thrown into misery whenever 
the foreign consumer cannot or will not take the usual supplies ; 
and does not begin with laying a sound foundation for a home 
German market and home consurnpt for German production, by 
setting free the industry of the people, and by abolishing the mili- 
tary restraints on their free agency and productive powers. There 
are good seeds sown by this great movement. It is a powerful 
demonstration of the will of the people for a common object, and 
of the people of capital and experience — of the weightiest people 
of a society. It can only fail of attaining the object, of raising 
German industry and well-being, by aiming at such an imprac- 
ticable object as that of making the league an acknowledged po- 
litical power, and by such impracticable means as that of getting 
a flag, a fleet, colonies, and all the idle fancies which scholars and 
newspaper writers pin upon the one wise and attainable object of 
the league — the raising a home market for industry first, and a 
foreign market afterwards as a secondary outlet for the products 
of a manufacturing body of operatives. 



12 



CHAPTER VI. 

NOTES ON THE PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.— ITS EFFECTS ON 
THE MORAL CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE. 

The educational system of Prussia is admirable — admirable as 
a machinery by which schools, schoolmasters, superintendence of 
them, checks, rewards both for the taught and the teachers, and 
in a word education — that word being taken in the meaning of 
the means of conveying certain very useful acquirements to every 
class of society, and to every capacity of individuals — are diffused 
over the country, and by law brought into operation upon every 
human being in it. The machinery for national education is un- 
doubtedly very perfect. The military organization of the whole 
population, and the habitual interference of government in all 
the doings and concerns of every individual — his very outgoing 
and incoming being, from the nature of his military service, mat- 
ter of leave, license, superintendence, and passport— make it as 
easy to establish an admirable system and regulation in every 
object government undertakes throughout the kingdom as in 
a barrack yard. But great statesmen and politicians, especially 
of the mihtary and nobility,. who see only one class or one side, 
of society, are very apt to mistake the perfection of the means 
for the perfection of the end. The mistake is common with our 
own parliamentary philosophers. An admirable machinery is 
constructed, which with its various and well-considered regula- 
tions and checks improved on perhaps by the experience and 
ingenuity of successive generations, is in reality a masterpiece of 
human wisdom and contrivance — such for example was our own 
excise system with its salt laws, and such is the same excise system 
now, in all that comes under its superintendence : and in the regu- 
lar working and wise adaptation of all the parts of this beautiful 
and perfect machinery, we forget that the object itself may not be 
worth all this wisdom, may be attained in a more easy, natural, 
and effective way, or may be even not worth attaining. The 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 171 

^visc!om and perfection of the machinery of the laws, and arrange- 
ments for attaining the end, are confounded with the vahie and 
wisdom of the end itself. The educational system of Prussia is 
no doubt admirable as a machinery ; but the same end is to be 
attained in a more natural and effective way — by raising the moral 
condition of the parents to free agency in their duties, or if not — 
if education, that is, reading, writing, and arithmetic, cannot be 
brought within the acquirements of the common man's children 
but upon the Prussian semi-coercive principle of tlie state, through 
its functionaries, intruding npon the parental duties of each indi- 
vidual, stepping in between the father and hisfiimily, and enforcing 
by state regulations, fines, and even imprisonment,* what should 
be left to the moral sense of duty and natural affection of every 
parent who is not in a state of pupilage from mental imbecility 
— then is such education not worth the demoralizing price paid 
for it — the interference with men as free moral agents, the substi- 
tution of government enactments and superintendence in the most 
sacred domestic affairs, for self-guidance by conscience, good prin- 
ciple, and common sense — the reduction, in short, of the population 
of a country to the social condition of a soldiery off duty roaming 
about their parade ground under the eye and at the call of their 
superiors, without free agency or a sense of moral responsibility. 
Moral eflccts in society can only be produced by moral influences. 
We may drill boys into reading and writing machines ; but this 
is not education. The almost mechanical operations of reading, 
writing, and reckoning, are unquestionably most valuable ac- 
quirements — who can deny or doubt it? — but they are not edu- 

* I asked an intelligent Prussian what could be done if a paient refused to 
send his chikl to school? He told me he had lately been at the police-office 
when a man was brought in for not sending his girl to school. She could not 
read, although advancing to the age to be confirmed. The man said his girl 
was earning her bread at a manufactory which he named, and he could not 
maintain her at school. He was asked why he did not send her to the even- 
ing schools established for such cases, and held after working hours, or to the 
Sunday schools. He said his wife had a large Aimily of young infants, 
and his girl had to keep them when she came from her work, while her 
mother was washing for them and doing other needful family work, which 
she could not do with a child in her arms. The man was told that lie would 
be committed to prison if he and his wife did not send their girl to school. 

In such a case, would the school-learning be worth that learning which the 
girl was receiving at home in household work, or in taking care of children? 



172 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

cation ; they are the means only, not the end — the tools, not the 
work, in the education of man. We are too ready in Britain 
to consider them as tools which will work of themselves — that 
if the labouring man is taught to read his Bible, he becomes 
necessarily a moral, religious man — that to read is to think. This 
confounding of the means with the end is practically a great error. 
We see no such effects from the acquisition of much higher 
branches of school education, and by those far above the social 
position of the labouring man. Reading and writing are ac- 
quirements very widely diffused in Paris, in Italy, in Austria, in 
Prussia, in Sweden ; but the people are not moral, nor religious, 
nor enUghtened, nor free, because they possess the means: they 
are not of educated mind in any true sense. If the ultimate object 
of all education and knowledge be to raise man to the feeling of 
his own moral worth, to a sense of his responsibility to his Creator 
and to his conscience for every act, to the dignity of a reflecting, 
self-guiding, virtuous, religious member of society, then the Prus- 
sian educational system is a failure. It is only a training from 
childhood in the conventional discipline and submission of mind 
which the state exacts from its subjects. It is not a training or 
education which has raised, but which has lowered, the human 
character. This system of interference and intrusion into the inmost 
domestic relations of the people, this educational drill of every 
family by state means and machinery, supersedes parental tuition. 
It is a fact not to be denied that the Prussian population is at this 
day when the fruits of this educational system may be appreciated 
in the generation of the adults, in a remarkably demoralized con- 
dition in those branches of moral conduct which cannot be taught 
in schools, and are not taught by the parents, because parental 
tuition is broken in upon by governmental interference in Prussia, 
its efficacy and weight annulled, and the natural dependence of 
the child upon the words and wisdom of its parent— the delicate 
threads by which the infant's mind, as its body, draws nutriment 
from its parent — is ruptured. They know little of human nature 
who know not that more of moral education may be conveyed in 
a glance of a mother's eye, than in a whole course of reading and 
writing under educational sergeants in primary schools and gym- 
nasia. Of all the virtues, that which the domestic family education 
of both the sexes most obviously influences — that which marks more 
clearly than any other the moral condition of a society, the home 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 173 

State of moral and religious principles, the efficiency of those prin- 
ciples in it, and the amount of that moral restraint upon passions 
and impulses, which it is the object of education and knowledge 
to attam — is undoubtedly female chastity. Will any traveller, 
will any Prussian, say that this index-virtue of the moral condi- 
tion of a people is not lower in Prussia than in almost any part of 
Europe ?* It is no uncommon event in the family of a respectable 
tradesman in Berlin to find upon his breakfast table a little baby, 
of which, whoever may be the father, he has no doubt at all about 
the maternal grandfather. Such accidents are so common in the 
class in which they are least common with us — the middle class 
removed from ignorance or indigence — that they are regarded but 
as accidents, as youthful indiscretions, not as digraces afrecting,as 
with us, the respectability and happiness of all the kith and kin 
for a generation. This educational drill of ail the children of 
the community to one system, in schools in which the parent has 
no control or election of what is taught, or by whom, or how, is a 
very suitable prelude to the education that follows it — the barrack 
life of all the Prussian youth during three years of the most pre- 
cious period of human life for forming the moral habits and cha- 
racter of the man as a future member of society. The unsettled 
military life for three years of every Prussian on his entrance into 
the world as a man, the idleness, want of forethought, and frivolity 
inseparable from his condition during this period, his half military, 
half civilian state, neither one nor the other, during all the rest of 
his life, his condition of pupilage under his military or civil func- 
tionaries, in every act or movement during his existence, from his 
primary school service (schulpflichtigkeit) to his being enrolled in 
old age as a landsturm man, are in realily the steps of his educa- 
tion. Are these the steps to any of the true objects of education; 

* In 1837 the number of females' in the Prussian population between tlie 
beginning of their 16th year and the end of their 45th year — that is, within 
child-bearing age, — was 2,983,146; the number of illegitimate children bom 
in the same year was 39,501, so that 1 in every 75 of the whole of the 
females of an age to bear cliildren, had been the mother of an illegitimate 
child. 

Prince Pukler Muskau states in one of his late publications (Siidostliclier 
Bildersaal, 3 Theil. 1841), that the character of the Prussians for honesty 
stands far lower than that of any other of the German populations; but ho 
adduces no statistical data for this opinion. As a Prussian, he would scarcely 
come to such a conclusion if it were not generally believed in Cennany. 



174 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

to the attainment of any high feeling of individual moral worth 
and dignity ? This educational system is in reality, from the 
cradle to the grave, nothing but a deception, a delusion put upon 
the noblest principle of human nature — the desire for intellectual 
development— a deception practised for the paltry poUtical end of 
rearing the individual to be part and parcel of an artificial and 
despotic system of government, of training him to be either its 
instrument or its slave, according to his social station. 

The British government has accomplished a much wiser and 
more effective educational measure — the only measure, perhaps, 
which, without giving umbrage to some political or clerical body 
or other, could have been adopted for the general education of the 
people— by the reduction of the postage on letters. This has 
brought the use and advantage of education home to the common 
man, for it no longer costs him a day's wages to communicate 
with his family. This great moral improvement in the condition 
of the lower class extends the influences of advice, admonition, 
and family affection among them. The postage was, in reality, 
a tax upon these moral influences. The people will educate 
themselves in a single generation, for the sake of the advantages 
this great measure has bestowed on education. A state-machinery 
of schools and school-masters spread over the country on the Prus- 
sian system, would probably have cost more than the sacrifice of 
revenue by the reduction of postage, and, owing to the clashing 
of religious parties, would never have been so effective in extend- 
ing education. The means in fact of education — a neighbour to 
teach reading and writing — were not wanting, were to be found 
in every parish, and the want of schools was a far smaller obstacle 
to the diff"usion of education than the want of any desire of the 
people themselves for education. The labouring class saw no 
advantage or benefit from it. This obstacle is overcome without 
interference with the religious opinions of any class or sect ; and 
it will be found that already the business of the schoolmaster in 
society is providing for itself, like that of the miller or the black- 
smith, without any aid from church or state. The supply will 
follow the demand in education, as in every other human want ; 
and the demand will be efl'ective in producing supply, just in pro- 
portion to the value and use of the article in ordinary life. This 
measure will be the great historical distinction of the reign of 
Victoria I. Every mother in the kingdom who has children 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 175 

earning their bread at a distance, lays her head upon her pillow 
at night with a feeling of gratitude for this blessing. It is the 
great and enviable distinction of the late liberal n:iinistry, that they 
carried this measure boldly into effect without cripphng its moral 
influence by reduction of a part only of this tax on the communi- 
cations of the people. 

Selbtsgefuhl is a superb word which the German language 
possesses, to describe the sense of one's own moral dignity as a 
man ; but the feeling or sentiment it expresses is wanting in a 
remarkable degree where you expect to find it strongest, — among 
the German youth, the nationally educated youth. Did it ever 
happen to a. traveller taking a walk in the neighbourhood of Ox- 
ford, Cambridge, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Saint 
Andrews, or of any of the universities in the United States, to be 
accosted by a stout, able-bodied, well-enough-dressed student 
begging, with cap in hand, for money from the passengers on the 
high road ? Ten thousand to one no man alive ever witnessed 
such debasement of mind among the youth of those countries, 
educated or not educated. The lad would sell his clothes, work, 
enlist, starve, drown, hang, but beg he would not. In Germany, 
within half a mile of the University of Bonn, on a Sunday evening 
when all the town was abroad walking, I have seen a student in 
tolerably good clothes, his tobacco-pipe in his mouth, begging 
with his hat off" on the public road, running after passengers and 
carriages, soliciting charity, and looking very sulky when refused; 
and the young man in full health, and with clothes on his back 
that would sell for enough to keep him for a week. This is no 
uncommon occurrence on the German roads. Every traveller 
on the roads around Heidelberg, Bonn, and the other university 
towns of Germany, must have frequently and daily witnessed this 
debasement of mind among the youth. This want of sensibility 
to shame, or public opinion, or to personal moral dignity, is a 
defect of character produced entirely by the system of government 
interference in all education and all human action. It is an ex- 
ample of its moral working on society. It is not from moral 
worth, character, or conduct in their private relations, but from 
government, from educational, military, or civil functionaries, that 
the studying class have, in every stage of life, to seek advance- 
ment. The generous feelings, impulses, and motives of youth, 



176 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

by which all means of living in any of the liberal professions, or 
even in the ordinary branches of industry, are to be obtained only 
by government license, appointment, and favour,* not by moral 
worth, merit, and exertion gaining the public estimation. Morally 
they are slaves of enslaved minds. Compulsory education, com- 
pulsory religion, compulsory military service, and the finger of 
government interfering in all action and opinion, and leaving 
nothing to free will and uncontrolled individual judgment, produce 
youths well educated, as it is called, because they can read, write, 
and sing, well dressed, well drilled, and able bodied ; and whose 
selbstgefuhl, whose moral sense has not been educated, raised, 
and cultivated, even to the extent of making them feel debased or 
degraded at running, cap in hand, begging at the side of carriages 
on the highway. 

This want of self-respect in the German character, produced by 
the educational and social system, and the undue importance in 
the German mind, of rank, office, and conventional distinction, 
and the undue weight of these in the social economy of Germany, 
are strongly marked by the profusiont of orders, stars, crosses, 
ribbons, and empty titles, with which the people, both of civil 
and military station, adorn and gratify themselves. Every third 
man you meet in the streets has a label in his button-hole, 
telling all the world, "lam a knight, look at me." No very 
young man among the continental military can have ever heard 
a bullet whistle in the field ; so that even by this class no very 
profound respect for the ribbon at the button-hole can be claimed, 
and none at all by the ordinary civil classes who trick themselves 
out with it en militaire. The feeling of personal worth — the 
pride, it may be — seems unknown to them, which leads the Bri- 
tish nobleman, gentleman of high station, or military officer, who 

* In 1834; for every 100 church or school situations to be filled up in the 
Prussian dominions, there were 262 candidates qualified by studies at the 
universities; for every 100 juridical situations, 256 candidates; for every 100 
medical, 196 candidates. 

t The difference of national character between the English and continental 
people on this point is illustrated by the circumstance that in 1834 the mem- 
bers of a single continental order — the French order of the legion of honour — 
amounted to 49,620 persons, and in the same year the five British orders 
numbered only 906 membei-s, and of these the greater number were persons 
of that social distinction from birth, rank, or office, that the decoration of an 
order was but an adjunct of little importance. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 177 

may have been honoured with a British or foreign order, to wear 
it only on particular parade occasions. He feels that he is some- 
thing without the external testimonial of it : the German takes 
the emblem for the thing itself The English gentleman would 
think it quite as inconsistent with his personal dignity to walk 
about on ordinary occasions, in the ordinary circles of society, 
with his stars, crosses, and ribbons plastered on his breast, as 
with the gazette of the actions in which he had won his distinc- 
tions plastered on his back. The German, again, ties his bit of 
red ribbon even to the button-hole of his dressing-gown ; the 
merchant goes to his counting-house, the apothecary to the bar- 
ber's shop to be shaved, the professor to his lecture room, in 
crosses and ribbons, as if they were going to the levee of the 
sovereign. The upper classes of society in all countries are said 
to be very much alike, and to show few of the peculiar distinctive 
differences which mark the national character in the middle and 
lower classes of each country. This is a mistake. The English 
gentleman, from the highest rank to the very lowest that assumes 
the appellation, is distinguished from the continental gentleman 
by this peculiar trait of character — his dependence on himself for 
his social position, his self-esteem, call it pride, or call it a high- 
minded feeling of his own worth. There he stands, valuing 
himself upon something within himself, and not upon any out- 
ward testimonials of it conferred by others. This feeling goes 
very deep into society in England. 

It is often objected to us by foreigners, that we pay the same, 
or even greater respect and deference to wealth, than they pay 
to the external honours conferred on merit by the sovereign : that 
wealth with us, as a social distinction, takes the place even of 
moral merits, and "what is a man worth" means how many 
pounds sterling he has, without any reference to his merits, real 
or conventional, to his birth, education, morals, manners, or other 
distinctions; that if he is poor, he is nothing in our society; if 
rich, he is everything. This too is a mistake, a wrong conclusion 
from right premises. Wealth has all that pre-eminence in social 
distinction with us, which the foreign traveller observes ; and even 
more than he observes, censures, and is witty over. But what 
is wealth? It is a proof, a token undeniable of great industry, 
great energy, great talent in his sphere, great social activity and 
utility in the possessor, or in his predecessor who acquired it. It 



178 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

is the indubitable proof, generally speaking, of great and success- 
ful exertion of prudence, skill, mental power applied to material 
interests, and of extensive social action ; and what ought to be 
honoured and esteemed, and held in the highest estimation in an 
enlightened society, if not the visible proof of these social vir- 
tues in the owner or his predecessors? The deference paid to 
mere wealth honestly acquired, its pre-eminence as a social dis- 
tinction, stands upon far more philosophical grounds than the 
social distinction of mere ancestry, or of mere function, or of mere 
title, or of the empty honours conferred by a sovereign. Wealth 
is an independent social power, and is the equivalent in the mate- 
rial world to genius and talent in the intellectual. The Roths- 
childs, the Barings, and these great millionaires are in the world 
of pounds, shillings, and pence, what the Shakspeares, Goethes, 
Schillers, are in the world of ideas ; and their social action and 
influence, their wielding of a vast social power in the working of 
which the fortunes, the comfort, the bread of millions are involved, 
require a grasp of mind, and are entitled to a social distinction, 
beyond the comprehension of the mustachioed German baron, 
who, issuing from some petty metropolis, finds to his utter asto- 
nishment that mere wealth commands greater respect in this 
working world of realities than his sixteen ancestors, his Ueuten- 
ant's commission, his chamberlain's key embroidered on his coat 
flap, and his half a dozen orders at his button holes. The com- 
mon sense of all countries gives this social distinction to wealth, 
above any other distinction that is not purely moral or intellectual. 
The principle is as clearly felt in Russia as in America; and 
where public opinion is in free action, as in England, it super- 
sedes the principle of mere conventional distinctions so far, that 
the latter without the former — nobility, titles, functions, orders, 
without wealth — are of no social weight. This common, almost 
instinctive judgment of all men under all varieties of government, 
according this pre-eminence of social distinction to mere wealth, 
proves that this judgment is right, that it is founded on some 
natural, just, and useful social principle, which cannot be philo- 
sophized away ; that wealth, mere wealth, is a more natural and 
just ground of social distinction, than any conventional ground 
from mere birth, mere court favour, mere title, or mere rank. It 
arises from the people, and is conferred by the people ; and all 
other conventional distinctions arise from, and are conferred by 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 179 

the will of the court or sovereign. The encroachment of the 
former upon the latter is a barometer showing the real progress 
of a community towards a just estimation of social worth and 
action, and towards a higher moral condition. Where every third 
man is lounging about as in Prussia, and generally o;i the Conti- 
nent, with his orders of merit of some kind or other— and many 
whose general merits would apparently be nothing the worse of 
the addition of a little industry to earn a new coat to stick their 
honours upon — the people, be their forms of government what 
they may, are but in a low social and industrial condition— are 
ages behind us in their social economy, and in their true social 
education as free agents and members of the community. 



CHAPTER VII. 

NOTES ON THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM OF PRUSSIA CONTINUED.— ON 
ITS EFFECTS ON THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.— ON 
THE PRUSSIAN CHURCH. 

The educational system of Prussia has been raised to such an 
influence on the arrangements of other governments for the edu- 
cation of the people, and from the writings of Cousins, and other 
distinguished poUtical philosophers, has been viewed in every 
country with such favour by men of all varieties of opinion in 
religion and politics, that it will be necessary to consider fully its 
operation on the moral and physical condition of the Prussian 
subjects, on their religious and social state. The state of religion 
under this educational system claims the first place. 

The great proof of the deteriorating working of the Prussian 
educational system upon the public mind is, that the public mind 
lay torpid and unmoved when the religious establishments of the 
Protestant church, the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches, were 
abolished by royal edict, and a third thing — a new Prussian 
church neither Lutheran nor Calvinistic — was set up, and im- 
posed by the edict of civil power upon the Protestant population. 
The abolition of the religious observances and modes of public 
worship in which they had been bred, was quietly submitted to 
by an educated population of eight millions of Protestants, as a 
matter of police, not of conscience, as a matter quite as much 
within the legitimate right and power of their government, as a 
change in their custom-house laws — so low has this educational 
system reduced the religious and moral sense in Prussia, and the 
feeling of individual right to freedom of conviction — and except 
from a few villages in Silesia which refused to abandon the Lu- 
theran liturgy and observances, scarcely a murmur was heard 
from this educated population at a measure not only destructive 
to the Protestant religion, but the most arbitrary, and insulting to 
freedom of mind and conscience that has occurred in modern 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. l8l 

history. If eight millions of people, people with arms in their 
hands, are brought by this educational system to regard with 
indifference the interference of government with all that free men 
deem sacred in life, with family education, religion, conscience, 
free agency, and opinion in religious belief— to be the passive 
slaves of a government in which they are not represented — to be 
nothing but machines to be managed by the hands of a host of 
public functionaries— then let us educate our own families in our 
own way in Britain, or not educate them at all, rather than adopt 
a system of national education for teaching reading and writing, 
so deteriorating to the higher objects of education — the cultivation 
of moral and religious sentiment, and independence of mind among 
the people. 

The history of the new Prussian church, will be one of the 
most important chapters to posterity, and is now the most im- 
portant to the Protestant interest in the history of this age. The 
subject is but little known among us ; and, although it is too grave 
and important for its place, cannot be passed over here without 
giving at some length the facts and observations regarding it 
which the traveller has gathered. To some these will be dull 
reading ; to others, to not a few in the present religiously excited 
state of the public mind in Britain, they will be of deep interest. 
The Prussian population, in 1S37, consisted, according to the 
official report of Von Hoffman, director of the statistical bureau, 
of 14,098,125 souls, of whom 

8,604,748 were of the United Evangelical or new Prussian Church. 

5,294,003 were of the Roman Catholic Church. 
1,300 were of the Greek Church. 
14,495 were Mennonites or Moravians. 
183,579 were Jews, of whom 102.917 had civil rights as Prussian sub- 
jects. 

14,098,12.5 



Of the eight and a half millions of the former Protestant, now 
Evangelical Prussian church, the proportions of those who were 
Luthern and Calvinistic are not known, as, after the amalgama- 
tion of the two, in IS 1 7, into one church by royal edict, the dis- 
tinction was considered as abolished in all official acts. 

It appears from the proclamation of his late majesty, of Sep- 
tember 27, 1817, addressed to these eight and a half millions of 
his Protestant subjects, that the amalgamation of the Lutheran 



182 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

and Calvinistic churches into one Prussian church had been a 
favourite idea of the royal family for some generations. The 
political object, probably, was to raise Prussia to the same posi- 
tion with regard to Protestant Germany in which Austria stands 
with regard to Catholic Germany — to make the Prussian house 
the civil head and protector of Protestantism. This proclamation 
or announcement of the royal will to unite the two branches of 
the Protestant church into one is of date September 27, 1817, and 
in words as follows : — " My illustrious ancestors, the Elector John 
Sigismund, the Elector George William, the great Elector and 
King Frederic I., and King Frederic William IL, laboured with 
anxious and pious care, as the history of their lives and govern- 
ment shows, to unite the two divided Protestant churches, the 
Lutheran and the Reformed (Calvinistic), into one evangelic 
Christian church in their land. Honouring their memory and 
salutary intentions, I willingly join in this purpose, and pray that 
a work pleasing to God, which in their days, met with insur- 
mountable obstacles from an unhappy sectarian spirit, may, under 
the influence of a better spirit which sets aside the non-essential, 
and holds fast by the essential in Christianity in which both con- 
fessions of faith agree, be accomplished in my states, to the honour 
of God and the welfare of the Christian church, at the approaching 
centenary commemoration of the Reformation. Such a truly reli- 
gious union of the two Protestant churches, separated as they are 
only by external differences, accords with the great end of Chris- 
tianity, fulfils the first intentions of the reformers, is in the spirit 
of Protestantism, promotes the public worship, is advantageous 
to domestic piety, and will be the spring of many useful improve- 
ments in schools and churches, which are now prevented by dif 
ferences of faith. To this wholesome, long-wished-for, and often 
vainly attempted union, in which the Reformed (Calvinistic) church 
will not have to go over to the Lutheran, nor the Lutheran to the 
Reformed, but both will form one new-created, evangelical Chris- 
tian church in the spirit of their holy Founder, no obstacle now 
exists in the nature of things, provided both these parties earn- 
esdy, and in true Christian spirit, desire it ; and on the approach- 
ing occasion of returning thanks to Divine Providence for the 
unspeakable blessing of the Reformation, show that they truly 
honour the memory of its great founder by carrying on his im- 
mortal work. But much as I wish that the Reformed and 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 183 

Lutheran churches in my dominions may partake with me in 
these well-considered views, I respect their rights and liberty, and 
am far from pressing them, on this occasion, to adopt and estab- 
lish it. This union can only be of real value if neither persua- 
sion nor indifference induce its acceptance, but a real and free 
conviction ; and if its roots and existence be not planted in the 
inward heart, and not merely in outward forms. As 1 myself 
intend in this spirit to commemorate the centenary fast day in 
celebration of the Reformation, in a union of the two congrega- 
tions (hitherto called the Reformed and the Lutheran congrega- 
tions of the garrison and court attendants at Potsdam) into one 
evangelical Christian congregation, and to partake with it of the 
holy sacrament of the Lord's supper, so I trust this my own 
example will operate beneficially on all the Protestant congrega- 
tions in my dominions, and will be generally followed in spirit 
and in truth. I leave it to the wisdom of the consistories, and 
the pious zeal of the clergy and their synods, to determine the 
outward concurring forms of this union, convinced that the con- 
gregations will in true Christian spirit willingly follow them, and 
that wheresoever the view is directed to what is the essential, and 
to the great holy subject itself, the forms will be easily adjusted, 
and the externals will of themselves proceed from the internals, 
simple, dignified, and true. May the promised period arrive 
when all shall form one flock under one shepherd, with one 
spirit, one love, one hope !" 

The previous attempts at an union of the two churches alluded 
to in this proclamation were, probably, the following. In 1615, 
John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburgh, who had left the 
Lutheran for the Reformed Church, held a religious conference 
between the two churches to accommodate their differences. But 
these were " the good old times," which our Puseyites and high 
church party would wish to bring back. The Lutheran clergy 
were too intolerant to listen to the sister church. " Catholic 
rather than Calvinist," was then, as no^, the field-cry ; and it 
was the common fashion to give dogs the name of Calvin. In 
1631, Sigismund's successor, George' William, sent theologians to 
a religious conference between the churches held at Lcipsic, with 
the same intentions and the same success. His son, Frederic 
William, also brought together a conference which, in 16(i2-63, 
sat for several months, and produced nothing. His son, King 



184 NOTES OP A TRAVELLER. 

Frederic II., in 1703 and 1707, attempted it also in vain. In 1736, 
his son Frederic William took it up zealously, and proposed to 
drop the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, which is the great 
stumbling-block to the genuine Lutheran, if the Lutheran church 
Avould give up those ceremonials of the Popish church offensive 
to Calvinistic eyes and ears, — the altar, the wafer at the sacra- 
ment, the high mass robes, the chanting the collect, &c. Many 
Lutheran congregations were not averse to such an union ; but 
in the two following reigns other objects and interests occupied 
the attention of government ; and the congregations of each church 
adhered to the usages and principles, now hallowed by time, of 
their respective branches of Protestantism. 

It cannot be doubted that under Frederic the Great, indiffer- 
ence about rehgion of any form spread widely in Prussia. Infi- 
delity was the fashion of the times in literature. Germany had 
no literature of her own at that period, and even the German 
language was held in such contempt that in noblemen's families 
in Germany, not sixty years ago, the children were not allowed 
to hear German, for fear of spoiUng their French idiom. Every 
thing was French, or an attempt at it ; and with Voltaire and 
Frederic himself at the head of all that was literary and intellec- 
tual, the tendency was certainly not towards religion. It is a 
natural effect of great calamities on nations, as on individuals, that 
they either make the mind grossly irreligious, or grossly supersti- 
tious. War, the greatest of all calamities, always leaves behind 
one or the other of these'extremes. The seven year' war, followed 
by a period of dissipation and irreligion in all the little Frenchi- 
fied German courts, produced, in general, irreligious action even 
very deep down in society. The progress of the French Revo- 
lution had no tendency, from first to last, to religionize the minds 
of the German population ; and when the third centenary com- 
memoration, in 1817, of the reformation approached, the Prussian 
people were in a state of stolid indifference, apparently, on reli- 
gious matters. The religious feelings of the congregations of 
both churches were cooled down to zero, or at least to the amal- 
gamation-point. The monarch himself, it appears from this pro- 
clamation, did not consider his court attendants and garrison at 
Potsdam entitled to have any religious scruple, or freedom of 
will, about taking the sacrament in any way the king pleased. 
These congregations were commanded. On the 31st of October, 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 185 

1817, the sacrament was administered to them, and to his majesty, 
according to the new union-ritual. A king's wishes are com- 
ni'ands, and strong commands, when his own example is laid 
down as the rule to be followed. Out of about S950 congrega- 
tions of the Protestant faith in Prussia, 7750 were reported to 
have joined the union, and adopted the new ritual. The public 
mind was in reality quite prepared for the step, if government 
thought the step worth the taking. Accustomed to obey without 
murmur or remonstrance, ignorant even of the intentions of their 
own government until they appear as fixed edictal laws like mili- 
tary orders, the people have no opportunity of thinking, much 
less of petitioning, or reclaiming, or making public opinion known 
upon any proposed public measures, A people in this state is 
ready for any step, in external ceremonial observance at least, 
that may be commanded. 

On the 30th June, 1817, an order from the minister of home 
affairs abolished the names of Lutheran and Reformed (Calvin- 
istic) churches, and also the historically significant and distinctive 
name of Protestant church, and enjoined and commanded the 
general use of the name Evangelical church only. Being fitted 
with a church, and their church with a name, the few who cared 
for such things began to consider wherein consists the difference 
between this new Prussian church and the churches of Luther 
and Calvin. These two are not merely separated, as the royal 
proclamation says, by external differences from each other, but 
by doctrinal and essential difl'erences. Calvinism, as it exists in 
Scotland, or in Switzerland, is far more widely separated both in 
doctrine and church observances, from Lutheranism, as it exists 
in Denmark or other purely Lutheran countries, than Lutheran- 
ism itself is from the Roman Catholic church. In what does this 
new Prussian church differ, or in what does it agree with either 
of those two main branches of the Protestant religion ? 

It was soon discovered that the Berlin synod, who, abolishing 
Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Protestantism, even to the very 
names, had framed this third thing to pleasure the royal will, 
had proceeded upon no doctrinal principles whatsoever, but upon 
a mere difference in the external observances of public worship ; 
and by an unworthy equivoque, unworthy of Christian ministers, 
or of men sitting upon public affairs of religious import, liad 
framed those external observances so that, with a safe conscience, 
13 



186 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

— that is, as religious conscience goes in countries without mental 
freedom, — any man, Lutheran or Caivinist, might partake of the 
sacrament of the Lord's snpper in this new Prussian evangehcal 
church, without being less a Lutheran or less a Calvinist than he 
was before. This may be very clever, but is scarcely honest. 
The following explanation will show the nature of this church 
trick. 

The difference between the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches 
consists essentially in their different doctrines on the sacrament of 
the Lord's supper, and on predestination. These are the two main 
points, with regard to which the one church cannot go over to the 
other. The old orthodox Lutheranism teaches, relative to the 
sacrament, " there is a real substantial presence, participation, and 
enjoyment of the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament, which, 
by means of an incomprehensible, so called, sacramental union 
with bread and wine, is so connected with it that the partaker, 
while he receives the elements, partakes also of the real body of 
Christ ivith and under bread and wine, wliich, however, is not 
an impanation ; that is to say, is not so to be understood as if the 
body of Christ was locally enclosed in the bread, or was connected 
with it out of the sacramental participation. The participation of 
the body and blood of Christ takes place not merely in a spiritual 
manner by faith, but by the mouth ; but also not in a gross way, 
as if the body of Jesus was crushed by the teeth, and digested like 
other food ; but it is a true, although supernatural sacramental 
eating of the body of Christ, which cannot be explained and com- 
prehended, but is to be taken up merely by faith, and subjection 
of reason under obedience to Christ." This is the original Luthe- 
ran doctrine, as laid down in the Concordia Formularis of instruc- 
tion on the sacrament. The Puseyite of the English church may 
perhaps understand it : the Calvinist can only wish him joy of his 
intellect, and honestly confess that it is to him unintelligible. The 
Lutheran church, however, had practically abandoned the extreme 
of doctrine on this subject. Some of the greatest of her orthodox 
theologians, as Zacharias and Storr, had long ago repudiated the 
gross idea of a manducatio carnis, and had gone over from this 
doctrine which borders on sheer nonsense, to Calvin's theory of a 
presentia operativa, and held it to be, practically, a matter of in- 
difference as to the working of the Lord's supper on the human 
mind, whether it was received as a fleshly, or a spiritual presence 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 187 

of Christ through a mysterious working of the H0I7 Ghost in the 
sacramental elements ; and it was generally admitted that, as to 
practical effect or meaning, Zwingli's milder view of the Lord's 
supper as commemorative only of the original scriptural event, 
was preferable to any other theory. The whole Lutheran church 
had thus, in modern times, a tendency to some modification or 
other of Calvinistic doctrine on this subject. The great Calvinistic 
dogma, on the other hand, of predestination, and election from 
all eternity of those to be saved, was practically receded from by 
the German Calvinist, and the position of the two churches with 
regard to this doctrine was reversed. Here the Calvinistic church 
had openly abandoned this doctrine in the extremx^ extent which 
went to deny man's free will, and the efficacy of his own moral 
and religious efforts or merits. The Formula consensus Helvetica, 
and the Resolutions of the Synod of Dort, are the only symbolical 
writings of the Calvinistic church on the Continent which retain 
the doctrine of predestination in all its Calvinistic rigidity. The 
other German confessions of faith softened and modified it from 
time to time : and, at last the Heidelburg Catechism omitted it 
altogether, and the Anhalt Confession directly contradicts it. In 
this actual state of the public mind in the two great branches of 
the Protestant church, — with difficulties on each side practically 
receded from, the Berlin synod had really a clear field for the 
amalgamation of the two churches, had they set about it honestly. 
The doctrine of predestination was not pressing, being connected 
with no religious act or observance of the churches in which it 
was originally maintained or denied : that of the Lord's supper, 
again, was pressing, because the sovereign had announced his 
intention of taking that sacrament on the 31st of October, in com- 
memoration of the third centenary of the Reformation, in a new 
way that was to unite the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches into 
one new church, form, and doctrine.* Instead of meeting the 

* II is curious in history to find, sometimes, extremes meeting; to find ar- 
bitrary autocracy in Prussia, and democratic government in the French repub- 
lic, adopting the same measure for the same object, and by the same means ; 
viz., amalgamation of the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches, for the concen- 
tration of civil authority over the congregations through tlieir religion, and by 
means of a consistory of the clergy of both churches. Under tlie date 2] Ven- 
tose. An. 10 de la Republique, citoyen Vanricura, sous-prefet of the Arrondisse- 
ment of Simmern, in the department of the Rhine and Moselle, makes a report 



188 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

difficulty obviously arising from the two distinct doctrines honestly 
and boldly, the synod opened a Jesuitical side-door through which 
the slender consciences at least, if not the robust, of both Lutherans 
and Calvinists, could slip in and go to the table, and slip out, and 
each take the sacrament, and please His Majesty, without offence 
to his own church doctrines. The synod amalgamated the forms, 
and left the substance, the doctrine, to shift for itself. In the con- 
secration of the elements in the Lutheran, and in the Calvinistic 
church, it is distinctly announced to the communicant in what 
sense it is presented to him — in the one, it is as the body and blood 
— in the other it is as the symbols of the body and blood. The 
synod of Berlin evaded the dilemma, by not consecrating the 
elements at all, either in the one or the other sense, but presenting 
them to the communicant with the historical averment, " Christ 
said, This is my body," &c. " Christ said, This is my blood," &c. 
Now that Christ said so is not doubted ; but the question is, in 
what sense did Christ say so ? in the Lutheran or in the Calvin- 
istic sense ? By a quirk, unworthy of the importance of the act, 
the Lutheran or the Calvinist might receive the sacrament in this 
new church, and each give the meaning he pleases, or that which 
is taught in his own church, to it. Nay, the Jew, or the Maho- 
metan, might very safely take the elements as here presented, 
without compromising his own faith, for they are only presented 
historically, and require no religious belief, no belief but in the 
historical fact, that on a certain occasion Christ said. This is my 
body — This is my blood;— a fact,;?er se, not doubtful, nor ques- 
tioned. This was no union of the Calvinistic and Lutheran 

to the prefet upon the union of the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches; and a 
consistory of ministers of both churches recommends the adoption of a com- 
mon ritual and an union, using almost the same phrases as the Prussian 
monarch; viz., that they differ only in the accessories and not in the essential. 
The German editor of this document (to be found in Number 5 of Denk- 
schriften und Brefe zur Characteristic der Welt und Literatur, Berlin, 1841) 
slyly observes, " that the principal difference between this attempt and those 
made in later times to unite the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches is, that the 
union was left.by the French government to be effected entirely by the clergy 
themselves, without the slightest influence to be used with the congregations 
to adopt it uirless by their own desire." The report of the sous-prefet, in re- 
commending the measure, proposes that it should be left entirely to time, and 
the free will of the people ; and considers the Protestants of both churches not 
ripe for such an amalgamation generally. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 189 

churches, bat a hocus pocus* trick played at the altar, by wliicli 
eacli might do the same religious act with totally difl'erent mean- 
ings. The difference between the two may practically and in 
religious effect on the human mind be of no importance, and the 
question itself be unintelligible on the Lutheran side ; but this is a 
knavish way of getting rid of the difficulty, and the union is but 
a deception as to doctrine or meaning. It is only a union of a 
form which both churches may use, the form having no reference 
at all to their distinctive doctrines, or to any doctrine of its own. 
There was religious sentiment enough in some corners of Prussia 
to object to this fiction ; but the new church with its no meaning 
would have been generally adopted as a very good cloak under 
wliich a man might wear what religious opinions he pleased, and 
still be clad like his neighbours— and in this view it was considered 
both a clever and useful church trick — if the unfortunate rage of 
the Prussian government to make all things uniform, to centralize, 
and, for the facility of command, to uniformize all things, had not 
pushed matters too rapidly. A new church Agenda, which should 
give perfect uniformity to the service of the new Prussian church, 
was composed, by order of his majesty, in 1822, by the former 
Lutheran and Calvinistic divines, under the auspices of Dr. Eylert 
and Dr. Neander. When this new form of worship, however, 
came to be introduced, it met with unexpected and universal op- 
position from the congregations. In many districts of a kingdom 
made up of patches from other countries, it was alleged that the 
rights of the Protestant faith confirmed by the laws of the land, 
allowed the Protestant congregations themselves to form and settle 
the external forms of their worship, and it is probable that they 
really had such rights reserved, when turned over, as in Germany 
was not unfrequently the case, from a Lutheran to a Calvinistic, 
or to a Catholic master, from political objects. Another great 
party, the liberal, began to think that however liberal the new 
Prussian church appeared in its doctrine, or want of doctrine, the 
Agenda prescribing forms of prayer to be adopted, and alone 
tolerated, was an attempt to impose new shackles on the human 
mind, (o turn religion into a support of despotism, and to train the 
Prussian mind, as the Russian mind is trained, into a religious 

* Hocus Pocus is said to be derived from llie mockery of the common 
people, at the Reformation, of the Catliolic words of consecration of the .sacra- 
mental elements — hoc est corpus — tnmsubstautiatiun allending the words. 



190 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

\''eneration for, and almost worship of, the supreme autocratic 
head of the state.* The monarch was impatient of opposition 
and delay, and forgetting that by his proclamation of 1817 he 
wants the union to be brought about " neither by persuasion, nor 
indifference, but by inward conviction," the new form of service 
v/as introduced with armed force, all objections to it were crushed 
as treasonable, and on some poor villages in Silesia which obsti- 
nately refused to exchange the old Lutheran service for the new, 
troops were quartered on the people to be supported at their ex- 
pense — that is to live in free quarters as if they were enemies in 
the land, until the people conformed. The people were ruined, 
and a few of these poor martyrs, about six hundred in number, 
calling themselves old Lutherans, found their way by Hamburgh 
and Hull to America — the last of the religious martyrs, it is to be 
hoped, whom the persecution of a despot will drive to her forests. 
Ten years after the establishment of the new Prussian church, 
Bishop Eylert of Potsdam published a defence and explanation 
of its principle and working—Ueber den Werth, und die Wirkung 
des evangelische Kirche in den Koniglich Prussischen Staaten 
bestimmten Liturgie und Agenda, Potsdam, 1830. According to 
the reverend author's view, the merits of this new liturgy (he was 
one of the composers of it) consists mainly in this merely historical 
presentation of the sacramental elements of the Lord's supper ; 
that is, in its being so presented that each denomination of Chris- 
tians may take it, and apply his own meaning to it — page 37, 38. 
The reverend bishop forgets that, so taken, it is no sacrament at 
all; it is only a reference to an historical fact, not to any religious 
signification of that fact, such as Catholics, Lutherans, and Cal- 
vinists attached to it, however widely they may differ from each 

* The following passage from a tract published in 1835, in Berlin, '■'• Send- 
schreiben wieder die falschen Propheten," and consequently published with 
the approbation of the censorship, as religious doctrine receiving its z»jpnma/w?-, 
gives countenance to the supposition that it was a state object to convert reli- 
gion into a political support of the monarchical principle. " Do ye believe in 
God? then must ye believe in Christ.' Do ye beheve in Christ? then must ye 
believe in the king. He is our head on earth, and rules by the order of God. 
The king has appeared in the flesh in our native land." The censorship has 
clearly approved of this idea of the incarnation of the divinity in the royal 
person as suitable religious doctrine for the people ; for no work or passage 
can be offered to the public without the approbation of the college of censor- 
ship, g 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 191 

Other as to what that signification is, or ought to be. On his prin- 
ciple, Jew, Gentile, or Mahometan, miglit receive the sacrament 
from him, and remain Jew, Gentile, or Mahometan : for it is only- 
presented to him as figuring an historical fact — not at all doubted, 
and not at all connected with any peculiar doctrine attached to that 
fact. This courtly divinity may suit the meridian of Potsdam, but 
is not Christian divinity. The bishop's defence of, or rather his 
apology for, his new liturgy, and Agenda, rests upon the following 
twelve grounds, stated in the work above referred to : — 

1. It is purely biblical in its contents. 

2. Consistent with the instruction of our evangelical church 
(which must mean consistent with itself, it being the liturgy of 
what is called the evangelical church, viz., the united Lutheran 
and Calvinistic churches). 

3. Binding, but not contracting on the mind. 

4. Old church-like in its language and forms. 

5. Awakens and nourishes piety. 

6. Preserves the meaning of the church (viz., of the Protestant 
church). 

7. Is the operative means of union of the two churches (Lu- 
theran and Calvinistic). 

8. Is the means of a farther and more sure progress to improve- 
ment. 

9. Is suited to the times. 

10. Is the firm bond of a church union, and as such the best 
foundation of a church constitution. 

11. It is purely national. 

12. Is edifying in its origin (viz., from the royal pleasure). 

Of these twelve grounds adduced, and argued upon by the 
reverend bishop for the adoption and defence of his new liturgy, 
not one can be called an honestly religious ground. The last six 
are purely political, not Christian grounds. The first six are theo- 
logico-political, not doctrinal or scriptural grounds. The expedi- 
ency for church or state, the adaptation of scriptural phraseology 
or sentiments to aid that expediency, form no doctrinal or religious 
grounds for introducing, and imposing by state enactments, a new 
form of church service, a new mode of public worship, without 
the consent of the public. Giving even to Bishop Eylert more than 
he is perhaps willing to take— giving him the admission that the 
Lutheran doctrine on the sacrament is inconsistent with common 



192 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

sense, and the Calvinistic doctrine on predestination equally so — 
it was incumbent on him to prove that he had discovered in scrip- 
ture a doctrine which reconciled both, not merely a quirk that 
avoided both : and that he had found in scripture, or in the doc- 
trinal writings of the two great founders of the two branches of 
the Protestant church, a right given to a king and synod, or to a 
state and church, or to a government of any kind, to intermeddle 
with the religious belief, observances, doctrines, or even errors of 
Christian Protestants at all — to impose upon them by state or 
church power any doctrines, forms, or observances, however good, 
not assented to by them, not agreeable to their religious convictions. 
The Lutheran and Calvinistic doctrines, and forms of public wor- 
ship or church services, such as they are, rational or not rational, 
liave become types, fixed landmarks in Protestantism, by which 
Protestant Christians in every land direct their course. Before 
new landmarks are set up, it is incumbent to prove not only that 
they are scripturally better, but that those who set them up are en- 
titled to do so, and entitled to enforce the assent of the Protestant 
community to them by the aid of the secular arm. In the con- 
troversy which this new liturgy, thus enforced on the Calvinistic 
and Lutheran congregations in Prussia, gave rise to. Bishops 
Eylert and Neander, the ecclesiastical sponsors of this bantling of 
a Prussian church, are on the horns of a dilemma. If, as Bishop 
Eylert says, the difference is not essential between his liturgy and 
the liturgies used in the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches, why 
frame it, why enforce it by the hand of the civil power ? Why 
tear asunder the bands of peace and harmony in which Protestant 
Christians were living ? Why impoverish, by quartering troops on 
them, the recusant villagers of Silesia who in their gross and 
honest ignorance clung to the religious forms and observances of 
their forefathers? Why drive them to the wilds of America, pil- 
grims of the nineteenth century seeking a refuge from religious 
persecution in her forests ? And from whence ? from the most 
educated land in Europe, from Prussia ! Why put down and 
prohibit the exercise of religious worship except within churches, 
by enactment of 9th March, 1S34— the most anti-christian and 
tyrannical law ever passed in modern times in any country laying 
claims to civilization, religion, and the blessings of education. 

But if the difference between the new and the old churches be 
essential, why do Bishops Eylert and Neander assume that they 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 193 

are the Luther and Calvin of the age, and are even invested with 
greater power than tlie original reformers ; as without communi- 
cations or conferences, which the first reformers had, with other 
Protestant ecclesiastics, or councils of both churches in other 
lands, they assume the power of cramming their own nostrums 
down the throat of the whole Protestant church ? Do the reverend 
bishops declare that it is only for Prussia they promulgate their 
liturgy ? Their opponents ask if the Protestant church was esta- 
blished for Prussia only ? If Luther and Calvin preached their 
doctrines only for Prussia? If Prussia be not a branch, and a 
principal one, of the general European Protestant church, which 
these two courtly divines have severed by the hand of the civil 
power, and on political, not doctrinal grounds, from the parent 
stem of which it formed a part ? Do these bishops maintain that 
the Prussian government is entitled to prescribe what religious 
observances and doctrines it pleases to its own subjects? Then, 
say their opponents, freedom of religious belief, upon which the 
Protestant church is founded, is gone. Christianity is safer, and 
freedom of opinion better protected from the arbitrary hand of 
the civil power, by having its basis, its point cfappui, out of the 
reach and beyond the territory of an irresponsible government 
supreme both in civil and religious affairs — safer, in a word, at 
Rome than at Potsdam. In an answer and declaration of the 
magistrates of the city of Berlin, dated 13th July, 1S24, to an 
official letter of the minister for home affairs, requiring them, as 
patrons of the city churches, to introduce the new liturgy— a very 
remarkable document for its independent and well-expressed 
arguments against the power assumed by the state to impose a 
liturgy on the subjects — it is observed, " If, notwithstanding the 
silence of positive law or usage, this liturgical right of the sove- 
reign is to be held one of the inherent rights of sovereignty, the 
sovereign must be entitled to the same right of imposing a li- 
turgy or other church observances on all his subjects equally — 
on the Catholics as well as on the Protestants. But this is decid- 
edly not the case with the Catholic population, and the Protestants 
will be induced rather to go over to the Culfwlic faith, than to 
be exposed to a constant inquietude of religious conscience by the 
ever-changing forms of religious worship, imposed according to 
the pleasure and personal views of each succeeding sovereign. 
The same liturgical right must be inherent also in Catholic as well 
as in Protestant sovereigns. How is the Protestant religion to 



194 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

subsist at all in Catholic countries in which there are very many 
Protestant congregations, if the Catholic sovereign has this inher- 
ent right over tlieir religious observances?" 

The principle that the civil government, or state, or church and 
state united, of a country is entitled to regulate its religious belief, 
has more of intellectual thraldom in it than the power of the 
popish church ever exercised in the darkest ages; for it had no 
civil power joined to its rehgious power. It only worked through 
the agency of the civil power of each country. The church of 
Rome was an independent, distinct, and often an opposing power 
in every country to the civil power, a circumstance in the social 
economy of the middle ages, to which, perhaps, Europe is in- 
debted for her civilization and freedom — for not being in the 
state of barbarism and slavery of the East, and of every country, 
ancient and modern, in which the religious and civil power have 
been united in one government. Civil liberty is closely connected 
with religious liberty — with the church being independent of the 
state, although not exactly in the way the Scotch clergy claim 
for the church, a church power independent of the civil power. 
The question being agitated on the Continent as well as at home, 
deserves consideration. 

In Germany the seven Catholic sovereigns have 12,074,700 
Catholic subjects, and 2,541,000 Protestant subjects. The twenty- 
nine Protestant sovereigns, including the four free cities, have 
12,113,000 Protestant subjects, and 4,966,000 Catholic. Of these 
populations in Germany those which have their point of spiritual 
government without their states and independent of them, — as 
the Catholics have at Rome, — enjoy certainly more spiritual in- 
dependence, are less exposed to the intermeddling of the hand of 
civil power with their religious concerns, than the Protestant 
populations, which, since the Reformation, have had church and 
state united in one government, and in which each autocratic 
sovereign is de facto a home-pope. The church affairs of Prus- 
sia in this half century, those of Saxony, Bavaria, and of the 
smaller principalities such as Anhalt Cothen, in all of which the 
state has assumed and exercised power inconsistently with the 
principles, doctrines, observances, or privileges of the Protestant 
religion, clearly show that the Protestant church on the Continent, 
as a power, has become merely an administrative body of clerical 
functionaries acting under the orders of the civil power or state. 






NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 195 

The many able and pious men of the laity as well as clergy in 
Scotland, who contend that this subserviency of the church to the 
state is not a sound and safe position for the Christian Protest- 
ant rehgion, are in the right practically as well as theoretically. 
The power of a state over the religious concerns of its subjects 
is proved by all history, ancient and modern, to be so adverse to 
the development of civil liberty, that it may be called the right 
arm of despotism. It is this power which enslaves the Russian 
and the Mahometan populations. It is adverse to the Protestant 
religion, not merely from the freaks or schemes of autocratic 
monarchs endeavouring, as in Prussia, to convert religion into a 
state machine, an evil which a constitutional government may 
prevent, but by an evil which no form of government can pre- 
vent—by reducing the moral weight of the clergy of a country 
to that of state-paid functionaries. If the traveller fairly exam- 
ines the religious and moral influence of the established clergy 
in Protestant countries, in Sweden, Denmark, England and Scot- 
land, Prussia, Sv/itzerland, he will find it diminished exactly in 
proportion to the power of the state over the religious concerns 
of the people, and at its minimum in those despotic states, such 
as Denmark and Prussia, in which the clergy act merely as func- 
tionaries put in by the state to perform certain duties according to 
certain forms. The union of church and state in the way in which 
it has settled itself in all Protestant countries, — viz., that of the 
civil power being supreme, and the church power merely adminis- 
trative, or at the utmost, deliberative, but not at all legislative and 
executive in church affairs — appears not to have been the inten- 
tion of the first reformers. A church power in Protestant coun- 
tries independent of the state or civil magistrate in all ecclesiastical 
afl'airs, as the Catholic church is by its subjection to the Roman 
pontiff only, was undoubtedly the prevailing idea in the Reformed 
church in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; and this inde- 
pendence of the church power was not ideal only, but, as every 
kirk session or parish record in Protestant countries shows, was 
exerted in the seventeenth century over acts in private life, which 
if illegal belonged only to the cognizance of the civil magistrate. 
Time, however, has proved that, under every form of govern- 
ment — in Holland, in Switzerland, in the Hans-towns with their 
various modifications of democracy, in Prussia, Denmark, Sweden, 
with monarchy or aristocracy as the ruling clement in their social 



196 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

economy, in Britain with a mixed constitution — no such state 
within a state, as a church power independent of the civil power, 
can exist witliout a derangement of all the movements of society. 
The independent action of an ecclesiastical power over spiritual 
affairs which cannot be distinctly divided from temporal inter- 
ests by any definition, as they run into each other imperceptibly, 
is abandoned, even in theory, in all Protestant countries except 
Scotland : and those who support the theory in Scotland are puz- 
zled when called upon to apply it to practice, and to distinguish 
what is purely spiritual in any given case, that does not also 
touch those civil rights and temporal interests which are avowedly 
out of church jurisdiction. They are nevertheless in the right who 
maintain this theory. The supremacy of the civil power over 
the religious concerns of the people is clearly inconsistent with a 
sound and pure administration of the Christian religion in Pro- 
testant countries. Now, there is but one remedy for this over- 
whelming evil which has been growing to a head since the Re- 
formation. It is to vest the church power in Protestant countries 
neither in the civil power or government of the country, nor in 
an ecclesiastical power independent of the civil power or govern- 
ment, which would be a state within the state incompatible with 
social movement, but in the source of all social power — in the 
people. It is in the voluntary system, in which neither state 
power or church power can interfere with the religious convic- 
tions of men, that Protestant Christianity must ultimately find its 
true and permanent asylum. 

It will not escape the reader that all these church questions 
abroad are modifications of the same non-intrusion question which 
agitates Scotland, and of the church extension and high church 
power questions which begin to agitate England : all are modifi- 
cations of the same unsettled question, whether the state or 
church, singly or jointly, should or should not have a power over 
the religious doctrines and observances ofthe individuals composing 
the social body. The church assumes now, as it did in the darkest 
ages, that such a power over the religious conscience should be 
lodged somewhere, and the only question it permits is, whether 
this power should be lodged in a body called the church, or in a 
body called the state. That this power should be lodged in a 
body called the people, that is, should be abolished altogether as 
an establishment in society vested with power — and no Christian 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 197 

doctrine, observance, or ceremony, have any exclusive rights, 
powers, or privileges in society more than any other Christian 
doctrine, observance, or ceremony, the preference being one which 
should rest on individual Christian conviction alone, not upon 
positive laws of a church, or state and church government — is a 
truth which is only beginning to dawn upon Europe from across 
the Atlantic. 

In this clerical epidemic, this cholera sncerdolalis which has 
spread over the European churches, it is a singular historical 
coincidence, that at the very same moment, the Catholic, the 
Calvinistic, and the English clergy are agitating for a church 
power independent of the civil power, and arguing the point 
(which is still more singular) upon precisely the same grounds. 
" The headship of Christ in his church," as propounded by the 
many able Scotch ministers who claim an independent power for 
the Scotch Kirk from the authority of the civil power, is stated in 
almost the same words and arguments by Dr. Von Schutz, Uche7' 
Kirchen Slants rechl in der P^^eussischen Rhein Provinz, Wurz- 
burg, 1841, and by a host of other Catholic polemical pamphlet 
writers, who claim the same independence of the civil power for 
the Roman Catholic establishment in Prussia. It would be a task 
bordering on the ludicrous, yet suggestive of just ideas of the 
nature of church power, to bring together the exactly similar 
reasoning, the identical scriptural references and expressions used 
by popish priests and presbyterian ministers, for proving the inde- 
pendence of the power of the church of the civil power, or state, 
for their respective church establishments. An apostolic succes- 
sion to power, derived from the headship of our Saviour over his 
church, is equally the foundation upon which the Papist, the 
Puseyite, and the Presbyterian builds at the present day the 
church's independence of the civil power. The popisli priests 
seem to have a stronger position in their argument than the En- 
glish or Scotch clergy, because the apostolic succession in the 
person of each pope is. a received dogma in their faith, from 
which there is no dissent among them; and the spiritual power 
of the pope, and the matters over which it extends — the jus 
majestaticum circa sacra — are settled and acknowledged points 
in the laws of all Catholic countries. The popish clergy also in 
Germany stand upon the liberal and popular groimds, that when 
the territorial possession of a district is, from political considera- 



198 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

tions, made over from one potentate to another, — from a Catholic 
to a Protestant, or vice versd, which was the case with the pro- 
vinces of the Rhine, Belgium, &c., — it is a monstrous proposition 
that the religion, laws, habits, and whole social existence of the 
people thus transferred, must be changed and accommodated 
forthwith to those of the new masters put upon them ; that from 
Protestants they must become Catholics, or the reverse — from the 
code Napoleon, must adopt the feudal law. The popish priests 
stand upon the defence of acknowledged spiritual rights, which, 
if taken away by a royal edict without any concurrence of the 
people to it through a constitutional representation, and a law or 
act to which the people are parties, would lay open all rights, as 
well as those claimed by the clergy, to the arbitrary interference 
of the civil power. Independent altogether of superstition or 
church influence, the Catholic clergy have here a support from 
this connection between their cause and the cause of liberal con- 
stitutional government, as opposed to a government of arbitrary 
edicts and irresponsible functionaries. It is the popular side, and 
the government will either have to give way, or to submit its 
propositions to a constitutional legislature. Between submission 
to the pope in all the questions with the Catholic church, and a 
representative constitution sanctioning by the voice of the people 
themselves the supremacy of the state in those questions, no third 
way is open for the Prussian government. It seems a decree of 
fate in social economy, that representative government, parlia- 
ments, shall spring up in every age from collisions between the 
civil and ecclesiastical powers. In their struggle for a supremacy 
of authority in regulating the human mind in its religious con- 
victions, the power drops from both, and is restored to its proper 
owner — the people themselves. The church questions in Prussia 
were of the late monarch's own raising. He wilfully lighted a 
candle to burn his own fingers. The different churches are sup- 
ported by the people, because their cause is opposed to an arbi- 
trary irresponsible government regulating by its edicts the most 
sacred interests of men. The Scotch and English churches stand 
upon no such popular grounds, for their claim is, that society 
should take a retrograde step, and re-establish a church power 
over the religious concerns of men which, from the advance of 
society in good government and intelligence, is already half 
abolished in constitutional governments, by being brought under 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 199 

the legislative power of the state, and must finally be abrogated 
altogether for the sake of religion itself, by the adoption of the 
voluntary church system, and the abandonment both by church 
and state of all power over the religious concerns of men, as a 
power which is merely a remnant of dark and barbarous times. 
The stones are too hot on which Wishart, Servetus, and Latimer 
were burnt at the stake, for Papist, Puseyite, or Calvinist to build 
a modern church power upon. 

The untravelled reader may not understand fully this question 
of the liturgy, without some explanation respecting the liturgies 
of the Lutheran church on the Continent. The Lutheran church 
never had one unchangeable liturgy, ritual, or form of public 
Avorship, like that of the English church. Luther himself, al- 
though he favoured set forms of prayers " to aid the weaker 
shepherds in their pastoral duties," was so far from giving them 
the importance given to such forms by the Church of England, 
that in his Order or Regulation of Public Worship of the year 
1526, he says in his powerful but simple language, — as a writer 
and thinker, Lutlier was the Cobbett or O'Connell of his age — 
« Will any congregation not willingly follow others in these out- 
ward things ? what need is there to burthen their consciences by- 
orders of councils which soon come to be laid down as law, and 
ensnare either their consciences or their souls ? If the one church 
follow the other from free will, or if each follow its own custom 
and usage, it matters not, so that an unity of spirit in belief and 
in word be preserved. The diversity in earthly and external 
things does no harm." Luther always maintained this Christian 
and evangelical freedom. It was the basis of his own Reforma- 
tion. Again, he says, in his explanation and preaching on the 
Gospel of Saint John, — " Wordly powers, princes, lords, and 
la!wyers, may make laws, give out rights and orders respecting 
houses and yards, villages and corn fields, wine, and land, and 
people, and all that is upon the earth that is subject to man ; but 
in matters of belief, in what belongs to the soul, to deal as with 
outward bodily things, such as our oxen, and houses, and yards 
— no! that is not to be suffered." Again he says, "I tell you 
again, neither pope, nor bishop, nor any man, has a right to put 
a single syllable upon a Christian man, unless it be done with 
his own free consent; and what is otherwise done, is done in the 
spirit of tyranny." The Lutheran church on the Continent has 



200 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

always adhered to the spirit and letter of Luther's doctrine on 
this subject. Every province, and almost every congregation, 
has always had some peculiarity of its own in the forms of prayer 
and church observances — that is to say, in its liturgy and agenda 
— but all keeping strictly within the Lutheran doctrine and spirit. 
Between 1523 and 1555, there were no fewer than 132 liturgies, 
church services, or agenda in the Lutheran church, all approved 
of, and sanctioned by the civil authorities of the land, and all 
strictly Lutheran, although differing in the- order, forms, obser- 
vances, or words. The Calvinistic church from the days of 
Calvin himself, had also its set forms as well as its extemporary 
prayer. The practical, eflect in the Lutheran church was that 
the sermon and the preacher's prayer at opening, and again at 
closing it, were always considered, as in the Calvinistic church, 
the main part of the service, and the liturgy rather as a prepara- 
tory solemnizing of the mind for it. This view seems also to be 
retained by the English Independents who follow the forms of 
the Church of England service. Now a memorial of twelve 
ministers of Berlin,* (October 25th, 1825,) against the force put 
upon their religious convictions by the new liturgy, states as their 
objections to it and to the agenda promulgated with it, that this 
freedom of religious action within the bounds of the doctrine and 
spirit of Lutheranism, as established by Luther himself, is abro- 
gated. They are bound, they say, like the priests of the Romish 
or Anglican church, to a literal delivery of certain forms of prayer, 
not suited to many of their congregations — in short, to a mass. 
They say, that independently of the errors or discrepancies with 
Lutheran doctrine that may be found in the new liturgy, it is 
erected into a new independent service, which the liturgy never 
was before in the Lutheran church, distinct and separated alto- 
gether from the sermon. This mass is made the sum and sub- 
stance, and the sermon following it only an adjunct. This import- 
ance given to the mere ceremonial, they say, tends to catholicize 
the' minds of the people, to make the mere attendance on ceremo- 
nial form the most important religious duty in their minds. The 
ministers of the new church are prohibited in the agenda from 
occupying more than one hour in the whole service, and the 

* Bedenken von zwolf evangelischen Predigern in Berlin', so wie vom Ber- 
liner Magistrat als Patron verschiedener Kirchen-gemeinden, iiber die Ein- 
fuehrung der neuen Kirclien Agende. Leipsig, 1826. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 201 

liturgy is to occupy one-half hour. The sermon consequently can 
scarcely have more than twenty or twenty-five minutes, which is 
totally insufficient, they assert, for conveying Christian instruction. 
They are also prohibited by the new agenda from using any 
introductory or concluding prayer to the sermon — the most im- 
portant and effective parts of the old service, both' in the Lutheran 
and Calvinistic church. The new service is, in short, two dis- 
tinct services — orie a formal mass, the other a sermon without 
the aid of prayer allowed to the preacher. They complain also 
that in this liturgy no part is allotted to the congregation. It con- 
tains about fourteen responses to be made by the choristers, who 
sing from a seat behind or near the altar, but the congregation 
has no more part in the new service than in a Roman Catholic 
high mass. 

The following is the order of the service in the new Prussian 
church. There is an altar railed in, and covered with an altar 
cloth. Two 'lighted wax candles and a crucifix stand upon the 
altar, and behind and around it are pictures of saints, and holy 
subjects, as in a Roman Catholic church. The only difference 
observable is, that the priest at the altar is in a plain black gown, 
instead of the embroidered robes in which the Catholic priest offi- 
ciates. He reads the new liturgy standing with his back against 
the altar, and facing the people. The amen to each prayer is 
finely quavered out by the choristers behind the altar, and the - 
« Halleluia," the " Holy, holy, holy," the " Glory to God in the 
highest," &c., are delivered with great musical effect, as might be 
expected in so musical a land. But, as justly objected to by the 
twelve ministers in their protest against this new service, the con- 
gregation have no part in all this, — are not made partakers, as in 
the former and in the English liturgies, in the act of' public wor- 
ship. They are but passive listeners, as to an opera. 

So little has it been intended that the congregation should take 
a part in this new service, that no books of the liturgy equivalent 
to the English Common Prayer-book are in their hands. The 
liturgy is for the clergymen only, and is not even to be got at the 
booksellers' shops. The only book of public worship in the hands 
of the congregation is the Gesang buch. This is a sort of Hynni- 
book in doggerel verse, which supersedes the Psalms of David 
and the paraphrases of portions of Scripture used in our church 
services. It is printed as prose, but each clause of a sentence is a 
14 



202 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

line rhyming to another clause. It is divided into sections and 
sentences, which are numbered; and the numbers being stuck up 
in conspicuous parts of the church, the congregation on entering 
sees what is to be sung without the minister or clerk giving out 
the place and verse. The whole part that the congregation has 
to take in the public worship by the new service is to sing or 
chaunt a portion of this Gesang buch with the accompaniment of 
the organ, before the minister comes to the altar to read the liturgy, 
and again in the interval between the liturgy and the sermon. This 
Gesang buch is not a collection of versions or paraphrases of any 
particular passages of the Old or New Testament,nor have its hymns 
the slightest reference to Scripture or any biblical allusion or phrase- 
ology. It is no doubt distilled from the Scriptures, but it carefully 
avoids giving any flavour of its origin. A Prussian congregation 
has as litde to do with the Bible as with the Koran, in the new 
church service, except that in the course of the liturgy a lesson of 
the day, as in the English service, is read from the New Testament: 
But as the whole liturgy, lesson and all, occupies but half an hour, 
and the congregation have neither Prayer-books nor Bibles in their 
hands, and have nothing but this Gesang buch, expressing no doubt 
religious sentiment, but with no reference to Scripture, it is evident 
that the intent has been to constitute this new service into some- 
thing like the Roman Catholic ceremonial mass, and to discourage 
the use of the Bible among the common people. The people have 
nothing but this Gesang buch as necessary in their public worship, 
and a meagre, childish composition it is — altogether unworthy of 
being the manual of devotion and of the public worship of edu- 
cated Christians. It is not to be denied that our Scotch version 
of the Psalms of David in metre is, if considered as poetical or 
metrical composition, but poor and rude ; yet it has, from anti- 
quity, use, and its close adherence to its original, a merit which a 
finer or more poetical version would probably want — it is better 
adapted to the ear and to the intelligence of the common man. 
It is often also worthy of its text, and, with all its poverty and 
quaint simplicity of metre, the poetry and feeling of the original 
psalm often shine through. But in this substitute for the Psalms 
of David in the new Prussian church, there is no scriptural basis 
whatsoever : it is a maudlin collection of sentiments, — pious, no 
doubt, but nowise scriptural ; and suitable rather for an infant 
school than for a congregation of grown-up Christians. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 203 

Tlie German language is now so generally studied, that a spe- 
cimen of the Gesang buch will enable most readers to judge for 
themselves of this Prussian substitute for the Psalms of David. 
By giving its exact English synonyme below eacli German word, 
the English reader even may be able to form some idea of its 
style and merits: — 

XXXIV. 1. Jesus wir erscheinen hier* deine Sussigkeit zu schmecken I^ 
Jesus we appear here Ihy sweetness to taste ! 
deine Gnad erflehen wir'^ Herz und Ohren zu erwecken :'' dass wir deine 
thy grace solicit ' we heart and ears to awaken : that we thy 
Himmelslehren^' uns zum Trost mit Freuden horen.^^ 
heaven-teaching us to comfort with joy may hear. 

2. Oehie deines Dieners Mund, gieb ihm d6ines Geistes Gaben, dass er 
Open thy servant's mouth, give him thy Spirit's gifts, that he 

mag aus Herzens-grund, mit des Wortes Kraft uns laben, und dass uns 
may out of heart-ground, with the word's power us refresh, and that us 
die Himmels-speise stark auf unser Pilger-reise. 

the lieaven-food may strengthen on our pilgrim-journey. 

3. Dir dem Vater und dem Geist soil das Herz geheiligt werden, hilf 
To thee the Father and the Spirit shall the heart dedicated be, help 

nur dass wir allermeist uns erheben von der Erden, um mit innigen 
only that we most especially us raise from the earth, for with inward 
Verlangen deine Gaben zu empfangen. 
desire thy gifts to receive. 

Although printed in the original as prose, the words 4 and 12, 
8 and 17, 21 and 27, in the first verse, rhyme together ; and in the 
same way in the other two verses of this hymn, each clause is a 
metrical line. Here is another taken by chance as a specimen : — 

CCVII. 1. Wir danken dir Herr Jesu Christ^ das du fur uns gestorbeu 
We thank thee Lord Jesus Christ that thou for us died 
bist'2 und unserer Sunden schwerer Last"' am Kreuz auf dich genommen 
hast, and of our sins the heavy load, on the cross upon thyself taken 
hast.23 
Last. 

2. Sohn Gottes und des Menschen Sohn, verherrliched nun nacli 
Son of God and of man son, glorified now after 

Schniach und Hohn, erlijs uns von dem ewigen Tod, und trost uns in 
contempt and scorn, deliver us from the eternal death, and comfort us in 
den letsten Noth. 
the last necessity. 

3. reich uns deine starke Hand in unserem Kreuz und Prufungs- 
O reach to us thy strong hand, in our cross and trial situa- 

sland, damit anch wir geduldig seyn; uns trosten deine Kreuzens- 
tion, that thereby also we patient be; us comfort thy sufl'erings on 

pein. 
the cross. 



204 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

4. Zu dir stelit unsre Zuversiclit du werdest uns veiiassen nicht, mit 
To thee stands our confidence, thou wilt us leave not, with 
deiner Gnade bei uns stehen bis wir zu deinem Reich eingehen. 
■ thy grace by us stand until we to thy kingdom go in. 

In this, the words 6 and 12, and 17 and 23, in tlie first ver^e, 
end metrical lines, and make a sort of doggerel rhyme, and the 
same takes place in the other three verses. The first of these two 
hytnns, or whatever they may be called, stands mider the rubric 
— '' Of Christian worship of God ;" the second, number 207, 
under that of — "Of the sufferings and death of Jesus:" and of 49 
such hymns, or sections of rhyming prose, under this head in the 
Gesang buch, not one makes any nearer allusion to, or gives any 
more knowledge of" the sufferings and death of Jesus'' than this 
specimen. The sentiments of this composition are no doubt un- 
objectionable ; but such nursery hymns or rhymes are infinitely 
below the intellectual pitch of our uneducated common people, 
and appear at once lamentable and ludicrous, when we consider 
that such is the only manual of public worship in the hands of 
the most highly and generally educated people in Europe — this 
the equivalent in their public worship for the Book of Common 
Prayer of the English people, and the Bible and Psalms of David 
of the Scotch. 

The new Prussian church service approaches certainly in its 
forms much nearer to the Lutheran than to the Calvinistic church ; 
and even the twelve Lutheran ministers of Berlin who protest 
against its tendency seem to have found no very great discrep- 
ancy with the old liturgy. The Calvinistic church is much more 
hardly dealt with by its subjection to a religious service of mere 
form. The greatest opposition, however, to the new church has 
arisen from the Lutherans. This is inherent in all religious dis- 
sentions — the slighter the difference the greater the discordance 
and acrimony. It is inherent in human nature. Where differ- 
ences are really inconsiderable, the violence done to our free moral 
agency by enforcing a conformity is the more revolting to the 
human mind. The will that controls our freedom is not disguised 
under any plea of importance in the object to be attained. 

The recourse to armed force, to the dismissal of functionaries 
suspected of favouring the old ritual, to all the usual modes of 
compulsion in arbitrary governments to enforce conformity, had 
the usual consequences of religious persecution — the calling forth 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 205 

new and unexpected zeal and opposition, A new sect of Old 
Lutherans, as they called themselves, sprang up ; that is to say, 
the Lutherans who were at first in a state of great indifference 
about the new church, were roused by the persecution for en- 
forcing a conformity in trifling observances, and fell back with 
new-born zeal upon the old original doctrines and church ob- 
servances of Lutheranism. Their congregations, which had been 
reckoned by the court-clergy as belonging to and embodied with 
the new Prussian church without asking their consent, repndiated 
such a junction. There was a considerable teaction towards 
"the good old times" of narrow, almost papistical observance of 
forms and usages as all-important in religion. The Puseyite was 
abroad in Prussia, as in England; and with the advantage in 
Prussia, that he had persecution aiding his cause, while our go- 
vernment, unluckily for zealots, lets them sleep themselves out 
in peace and neglect. 

The Prussian government might have been pleased with this 
retrograde step to the spirit of the 16th century; for in bringing 
forward its new church, the avowed object was to raise a bul- 
wark against the modern spirit of religious freedom, and to re- 
store "the good old times." But this revival could not be tole- 
rated, because it was an independent step of these Old Lutherans, 
and here government must originate every movement of the peo- 
ple. The government was consequently in the false position of 
acting in the spirit of this very party she was persecuting. 

In estimating the state of religion in Protestant Prussia, the 
practical tendency of the new service pointed out by the twelve 
ministers and by the magistracy of Berlin in their memorials against 
it, must be examined. The new service, as stated by them, cer- 
tainly does consist of two distinct, and in principle totally differ- 
ent and conflicting services. The one is a mass requiring a 
passive acceptance of the formal ceremonial prayer of the priest, 
without any mental effort of the congregation, and with as little 
devotional exercise or participation on their part as in the popish 
church; the other service is a sermon addressed altogether to the 
mind of the congregation, standing consequently upon a principle 
at variance altogether with that on which the other part of the 
service is founded. In the afternoon there is no service at the 
altar, no liturgical prayers as in the Church of England ; but there 
is a section of the Gcsang buch sung, the Lord's Prayer, a sermon, 



206 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

the Lord's Prayer again, and the blessing, and another portion 
of the Gesang buch sung, which constitute the evening service. 
This radical division in the church service appears to have formed 
a similar division in the religious state of the people. You see 
some going to church to hear the liturgy, and going out when it 
is finished as having gone through all that is essential in religious 
duties : others again are going in when the liturgy is over, or go 
to the evening service only, as the sermon, and not the ceremonial, 
is to them the essential. The junction of the two distinct prin- 
ciples in one service is as incongruous as it would be to bind the 
New Testament and Dr. Strauss's Life of Jesus in one volume. 
Rationalism is very generally preached after a church service 
requiring passive inertness of mind, and repose upon ceremonial 
forms of prayer as much as in the Church of Rome. 

The forced amalgamation of the Lutheran and Calvinistic 
churches into this third thing, neither Lutheran nor Calvinistic, 
and the abolition of the very name of the Protestant church in 
Prussia, is undoubtedly the most gratuitous, unhappy, and sense- 
less act of irresponsible despotism ever exercised over and sub- 
mitted to by a Christian people in civilized times. There is much 
in a name. With the abolition of the name of the Protestant 
religion, this government has effected what emperors and popes 
could not do — has nearly destroyed the Protestant religion itself 
in Germany, and with it almost all religion. The ancient liturgy 
of the Lutheran, the freely out-poured prayer of the Calvinist, 
being both silenced in the land, the mind of the great mass of the 
people had nothing Christian to hold by, nothing in religion ve- 
nerated as doctrines or practices of worship from former times, 
from respected associations with the sufferings or deeds of their 
forefathers. Infidelity, Deism, Straussism, and all the other forms 
and shapes which unbelief in Christianity can assume in the spe- 
culative, dreaming German mind, have had free play. Protest- 
antism as a church, and even as a name, being abolished in Prus- 
sia, Christianity was left for its defences to the antiquated bulwark 
of the Roman Catholic faith. The middle ground between gross 
superstition and gross infidelity, on which the two Protestant 
churches were planted, was seized for state purposes to build 
this new Prussian church upon. The spread in the same age, 
of Catholicism on one liand, and of infidelity on the other — the 
Catholic priest making converts on one side of the street, and Dr. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 207 

Strauss on the other — shows a religious condition of the German 
people, which the traveller finds as unaccountable as it is unde- 
niable, until he traces it as a natural consequence of this act of his 
late Prussian majesty, which cast loose at once all the ties which 
had held the public mind fast for three centuries to one or other 
of the two Protestant churches. 

In the two distinct services tacked together in this new Prussian 
church, that which addresses itself to the mind of the congrega- 
tion, the sermon, is by no means left in free action. It is not only 
shorn of its introductory and concluding prayers appropriate to 
the subject preached, and which the twelve ministers consider 
the most valuable privilege of their former Lutheran church 
from its beneficial effect on their congregations, and it is not only 
confined in time, by church rule given out by the state, to half 
an hour, but the text on which alone the ministers throughout 
all the kingdom are allowed to preach, is appointed on all fast 
days, or particular church days, by government — that is to say, it 
is given out to the ministers by the consistory of each province, 
of which consistory the head and president is the high president 
of the province, the equivalent functionary to the prefet com- 
manding in civil, military and ecclesiastical affairs, according to 
his orders from the general government. The consistory, synod, 
superintendents, and other ecclesiastical powers are administrative 
only on the Continent ; not deliberative, far less co-ordinate with 
the civil power in their functions. They only have in Prussia to 
give out, and distribute on such occasions, the Text ordered by the 
government. On ordinary Sundays the text is taken generally 
from the lesson of the day, or portion of Scripture read in the 
course of the liturgy — at least I always found it so, both in the 
morning and evening sermon. If it be a church rule, however, 
or only the consideration of the preacher that his congregation in 
general have no IJibles with them to refer to, and this portion 
being the last they have heard may be fresh in their memories, is 
uncertain. I ascribed it to the discretion of the preachers. 

As to the doctrines preached, the new Prussian church is un- 
derstood to be divided — as its servicers — into two distinct parties ; 
those who preach in the spirit of rationalism, and those who preach 
in the spirit of pietism. The Germans enrich their rich language 
by terms which express every modification of intellectual action. 
Pietism is not piety. It rather expresses mysticism, — the re- 



208 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

ceiving of the incomprehensible, as the popish and old Lutheran 
churches do, as matter of religious belief. Our Puseyites would 
be pietists in the German classification. Rationalism, again, is 
by no means infidelity, or free-thinking. This is only the extreme; 
as gross superstition and idolatry are the extreme of pietism. 
Rationalism in the pulpit seems applied to those who reject the 
value, importance, and efficacy of mere external ceremonies of reli- 
gious worship, and address themselves to the understanding, not 
to the blind feeling, or imagination. Our Scotch clergy would be 
all reckoned rationalists. The new Prussian church is founded 
on pietist principle,— on blind submission of the mind to forms of 
worship, and observances of ceremonials, prescribed by the state 
through its clerical functionaries ; and the new service is a mass, 
as far as regards the mind. The late king, the present, it is said, 
and, of course, all officers and functionaries about the court, are ' 
pietists. The public mind in general seems to have taken an 
opposite direction, and to have a tendency to rationalism in its 
extreme— that is, not merely to understanding what it is required 
to believe, and to undervaluing mere ceremonial religion, but to 
treating all religion with levity, indifference, or disbelief. Infi- 
delity and superstition are not incompatible. There is evidently 
a strong disposition to mysticism, to superstitious veneration of 
forms and ceremonies,, along with a great disregard of religious 
conduct, knowledge, or sentiment, in the Prussian people of the 
new Prussian church. 

The dispute of the Prussian government with the Roman Ca- 
tholic church arises from, and is a corollary of, the unwise inter- 
ference of the late king with the Protestant churches. The dis- 
pute is not understood in England. Of a population of fourteen 
millions in the Prussian dominions, five millions and a quarter, 
or about three-eighths of the whole, are Catholics. In mixed 
marriages formerly, in Prussia, the Catholic clergy interfered no 
more with the question, in what religion the parents should bring 
up the children, than they do now in Britain, America, or Swit- 
zerland, The matter was regulated by the discretion of the 
parents, and practically the male children usually followed the 
church of the father, and females that of the mother. MiXed 
marriages, also, in the middle or lower ranks of life were less 
common when Protestantism, in one or other of its branches, 
hedged in families, as it were, from familiar intercourse with those 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 209 

not of their own religion; but when the Protestant rehgion was 
formally aboUshed in Prussia, and mixed marriages became fre- 
quent, the Popish clergy were not so much in the wrong in say- 
ing if these children are not brought up Catholics, they will be of 
no religion or form of Christian faith whatever ; and the state of 
religion among that part of the German population which had 
been Protestant, the rapid increase of Deism, Straussism, infi- 
delity, indifference, fully justified this apprehension. The Catho- 
lic population, as might be expected, espouse warmly the side of 
their clergy; and a great proportion of the rest of the people, be- 
come indifferent to religion, look upon the claim of the Catholic 
church in mixed marriages with favour. It is not a question of 
the right of parents to bring up and educate their children accord- 
ing to their own judgment. The feeling of all individual right 
and civil independence is weakened, and that parental right in 
particular is infringed upon, and all parents are more of less de- 
prived of it by the Prussian educational system. It is a question, 
in reality, between a despotic government and the Catholic church, 
which shall have the mastery and control in bringing up the 
children of mixed marriages ; and the Catholics, the parents, and 
the liberal party very generally espouse the side of the Popish 
church, as less of an interference with people as moral beings and 
free agents, irf their private family arrangements, than the con- 
trol of the Prussian state. It is one thing, they say, to have the 
clergyman stepping into your house to advise, exhort, entreat, 
force you by every moral influence, to educate your children ac- 
cording to his views of what is right; it is another to have the 
public functionary intruding into your family management, fining 
you for your child's absence from school, if the educational func- 
tionaries think he should have been there, and judging of your 
conduct, motives, and arrangements, as head of your own family. 
This natural feeling of opposition to the most arbitrary moral 
despotism ever imposed on a civilized people, the interference of 
the educational system of Prussia with paternal judgment and 
free-agency in family management,— an interference far more 
demoralizing to the human mind than the ignorance of the arts 
of reading and writing, — strengthens the side of the Catholic 
clergy with a portion of the liberal interest. Catholicism is, in 
fact, the only barrier at present in Prussia against a general and 
debasing despotism of the state over mind and action. 



210 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

The Catholic population of Prussia has, besides, its separate 
grievances to complain of. The primary or other low schools 
may have Catholic schoolmasters where the majority of the in- 
habitants are Catholic ; but where they are mixed, and less than 
a majority, although very numerous, and the Catholic population 
is much mixed in that way in some districts, they must send their 
children to be taught by schoolmasters of a different faith ; and 
for higher education, they complain that no proportionable or 
suitable provision is made. Two universities, Bonn and Breslau, 
are mixed universities, in which Catholic professors and students 
are on an equal footing with Protestants. But this is considered 
no adequate provision for the higher education of the upper 
classes of five millions of people, of whom 1,750,000 inhabiting 
the Rhenish provinces are the most industrious, enterprising, and 
wealthy of the subjects of Prussia, They complain, too, that 
Catholicsr are not impartially dealt with in advancement to the 
higher functions under government; that scarcely a Catholic 
colonel of a regiment can be found in the military establishment 
of the country, or as the chief of a department or bureau in the 
civil. This seems no unreasonable complaint, considering that 
the Catliolic population of Prussia exceeds the whole population 
of some Protestant kingdoms, — of Scotland, Sweden, Denmark, 
Hanover, Saxony, or Wirtemburg ; but this very Sxclusion from 
office, if true, is perhaps the cause, in a great measure, of the 
superior industry and advance in trade and manufacture of the 
Rhenish provinces. 

A more justly felt, and to Catholic feelings more revolting 
grievance, is, that the youth studying for the priesthood in the Ca- 
tholic church are subject,iike other young men, to serve for three 
years (commutable by special favour to one year) in a regiment 
of the line ; and the only exemption in their favour is, that they 
may be allowed to postpone the commencing their military ser- 
vice until their twenty-fifth year; and then, if they have actually 
become members of the priesthood, and have taken sub-deacon's 
orders, they are exempt altogether : but all depending upon the 
good finding of a commission of Protestant military functionaries. 
The clerical student in our Protestant church follows a course 
of study, and of life, which fits him for every social duty, as much 
as or more than other men ; and if military or other social duty 
is required by the state, no good reason can be shown why he 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 211 

should be exempt more than other citizens, if he have no clerical, 
duties, or status in the church. But the Catholic priest must be 
bred from infancy to his vocation, like a little girl to the duties of 
her sex, — must be bred like a female to abstinence, chastity, 
purity, self-denial of all appetites and indulgences, and kept, like 
the well-brought-up female, in ignorance of the vice and mental 
contamination familiar to men. To put a man so bred into the 
ranks of a regiment, and to live in barracks and guard-rooms for 
three years, or one year, or even one day, is demoralizing the 
individual, and tainting the purity of mind required for his pecu- 
liar social position as a popish priest devoted to a life of celibacy; 
and whether that position be right or wrong on religious, social, 
or moral grounds, it is tyranny in a government to disregard 
what its subjects do regard. These are but trifles ; but that such 
trifles are complained of by more than a third of the whole popu- 
lation of the country, shows that Prussia carries a Catholic Ireland 
in her bosom. It shows, too, that governments which seek to 
extend their powers beyond the legitimate objects for which 
government is established in human society,— the protection of 
person and property, and the regulation of the material interests 
of men for the general good, — and to embrace within their autho- 
rity the religious, moral, and intellectual action of the human mind . 
by state establishments, and state interference in religious educa. 
tion and free agency, stand upon dangerous ground, and exist only 
by the patience of the people. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

NOTES ON THE PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM CONTINUED.— ITS 
^ EFFECTS ON THE SOCIAL AND MORAL CONDITION AND CHARACTER OF 
THE PEOPLE. 

The voice of history in praise or reproach of kings is not heard 
amidst the whispers of courtiers, or the hurra of armies. Her 
note comes to the ear of posterity from the cottage and the foot- 
path of tlie common man. The upper and educated classes in 
Prussia live upon the industry of the people entirely, by the ap- 
pointments under the government, either as military officers, civil 
functionaries, clerical or educational officials ; or if they derive 
their living direct from the people, and not from the hand of 
government, still they derive the privilege to exercise this means 
of living, be it in the law, in riiedicine, in trade, or any branch of 
industry, from the constituted authorities. These classes are loud 
enough in their adulation of the government of the late monarch, 
and of the social economy of Prussia, — of its military system, its 
educational system, its functionary system, and of all that emanates 
from the higher powers. No wonder. They are strangers to 
individual free agency in society, and they hold their appointments 
and means of living, and look for their bread, or that of their 
children, from the hand of government. Their voice alone is 
heard in the literary world on Prussian education, religion, social 
economy and affairs : and their voice is one shout of praise. But 
the future historian of this age, judging from purer sources, from 
facts and principles, will regard the Prussian social economy estab- 
lished by the late monarch as an attempt, now that the power of 
the sword and of brute force in civilized communities is gone, to 
raise up an equally despotic, irresponsible power of government, 
by enslaving the habits, mind, and moral agency of the people 
through an educational, military, and religious training, and a 
system of perpetual surveillance of functionaries over every indi- 
vidual from his cradle to his grave. The attempt will probably 
fail, because it involves inconsistencies. It is a struggle of contra- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 213 

dictions. A rigid censorship of tlie press, and a general education 
of the people ; a religious population, and an interference of go- 
vernment with, and a subversion by its edicts of, the religious 
observances, forms, and prayers of a church for which their fore- 
fathers had shed their blood in the battle-field ; a moral people, and 
an intermeddling of the hand of government in the free action of 
man as a moral agent, in the sanctity of family duty and manage- 
ment, and during the most precious period of human life for forming 
the moral habits and character, — a barrack-room education for all 
classes; a wealthy and happy people, and a ruinous yearly demand 
upon that time and labour out of which alone national wealth and 
well-being can grow, for the sake of an idle and unfounded display 
at reviews and parades of a military strength not efficient, in 
reality, from the nature of its materials, for military purposes; — 
these are incompatibilities which even Prussian discipline cannot 
make to march together. The reign of the late monarch will be re- 
garded as an attempt to hold fast by autocratic irresponsible power; 
but to shift the ground which supported it from sheer military force 
to a power founded somewhat like the Chinese, the Mahometan, 
or the Russian, upon the education, habits, and religion of the 
people, — all of which were to be Prussian, under the guidance of 
government, and subservient to its support. He will be judged 
of by posterity as a well-meaning, but weak man, tenacious of 
what he deemed power (as all weak men are), and which (as is 
often the case) was in reality not power ; who forfeited his word 
to his people to give them a constitution, and who had a people 
as abject as he was autocratic. He came out of severe trial and 
adversity untaught by it, forgetful of the struggle made for him 
by his subjects upon his promise of giving them a representative 
constitution ; and he has bequeathed to his successors a social 
economy of his own construction, full of inconsistencies and false 
principles. There are men even in England, and they abound on 
the Continent, who deem it a social, almost a moral duty, to see 
nothing wrong in the doings of kings, to laud every act and every 
character clothed in royal authority. Our middle classes do not 
partake in this indiscriminating love for the purple. The distance 
of social position, like the distance of time, enables them — and they 
constitute the great body of our intelligent thinking public — to form 
an historical judgment of the men and events of their own times. 
They'judge now, as posterity will judge hereafter. They will 



214 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

judge that the late Prussian monarch, — the lauded, the almost 
worshipped by our aristocracy and clergy, as the best, the wisest, 
the most conservative, the most anti-revolutionary monarch of our 
age, — has overturned the Protestant religion, and shaken Chris- 
tianity itself, by his ultra-conservative zeal to establish the basis 
of his autocracy on the religion of the people. What would those 
lords, and squires, and clergy say, if a king and irresponsible 
cabinet among us were to put down the Churches of England and 
Scotland, and to impose on the people by royal edict a selection 
of Mrs. Barbauld's prayers and hymns, instead of the time- 
honoured liturgy of the former church, and the spirit-awakening 
effusions of the latter ? This is precisely what has been done in 
Prussia. Mrs, Barbauld's nursery prayers and hymns are, as 
devotional compositions, quite as near to the excellence of the 
admirable old liturgy, or to the Psalms of David, as the compo- 
sitions of Dr. Eylert and Dr. Neander, although aided, it is said, 
by the royal pen itself in some of the prayers, and of the doggerel 
ditties of the Gesang-buch. The Kurie Eleaison, and other 
operatic quaverings in the new service, are, it is said, borrowed 
from the Greek church, the late king having, when on a visit to 
Russia, been much pleased with those parts of the Greek service. 

The one point for political philosophy is, that this act is the act 
of the pattern king of the Continental governments, whose reign 
is held up by all the conservative interests on the Continent as a 
signal and undeniable proof that irresponsible autocratic power 
vested in the monarch, and all legislation emanating from the royal 
authority alone, without any constitutional representation of the 
people in the legislature, are compatible with the utmost good 
government, the utmost physical, moral, and religious well-being 
of society. 

The other great point is, that this is the people whose educa- 
tional system, spirit, and institutions are held up as a model by the 
liberal, the pious, the benevolent of other countries, who are 
anxious for the diffusion of education ; but who mistake the means 
for the end, the almost mechanical arts of reading and writing for 
the moral elevation of character which education should produce. 

The page of history does not supply another example so striking 
as this of the deteriorating influence of arbitrary, irresponsible 
power, both on the ruler and the ruled. It cannot be doubted 
that the late monarch was an amiable, well-meaning 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 215 

by all who approached him. The more the historian gives on this 
side, the more he must take on the other. The mere possession 
in modern society of this irresponsible, unchecked, autocratic power 
in legislation, brings this good and popular sovereign into the luien- 
viable historical fame of having overturned religion in Germany, 
and of having established a social, moral, and religious vassalage 
over his people. History will have her day of judgment, and 
will judge public men by their public acts. She will hear the cry 
of the victims, said to have been 2966 individuals, suffering for 
their religions or political opinions, and pardoned on the death of 
this good and amiable sovereign by an act of amnesty of his suc- 
cessor. History will ask, what where the crimes of these persons 
(whatever their numbers may have really been, a secret probably 
only known to government)? What rebellions, what treasons, 
what tumults occurred in this reign ? Or were they the victims 
of their free expression of opinions, — torn from their families and 
homes, imprisoned, condemned, banished, because they presumed 
to, remind their sovereign of the natural and constitutional rights 
of the people, and of the royal promise to restore those natural 
rights to a representation in the legislature; a promise given in the 
hour of need, and broken in the hour of prosperity ? Or was it 
their crime that they conscientiously opposed an arbitrary and un- 
necessary change in the Protestant religion as handed down to them 
by their forefathers? History will have her day of judgment; 
nor will her judgment of the sovereign be biassed by the private 
virtues or amiable qualities of the man ; nor by the adulation of 
a people trained to crouch before their master, and lick the hand 
that smites. The abject submission of mind to all authority, the 
suspension of judgment on public acts, and the adulation of all 
royal personages, are natural effects on the ruled of the unmixed, 
irresponsible, autocratic power in the ruler. The popularity of 
the ruler in such a condition of society is founded on his private 
personal character, not on his public acts; and the fine terms of 
beloved, adored, patriotic, beneficent, applied to the monarch, are 
words of form by which the judgment of history will not be 
swayed. 

But, in stating the evil of this reign, the good should not be 
overlooked. It broke the oppressive feudal vassalage of the 
peasantry under the nobles, and has raised their condition physic- 
ally and morally. If a heavy military burden be laid upon the 



216 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

people, — if they have, in effect, only changed masters, and their 
time, labour, and free action in industry be now as much absorbed 
by the state and its functionaries as formerly by their local feudal 
lords, still the yoke is easy which all bear the weight of equally. 
Let it not be forgotten, too, that the freedom of mind in intellectual, 
political, and even religious action, and the freedom of person 
and property in industrial action, are not felt as essential wants 
in a state of society in which the people have no intellectual or 
industrial activity. A few of the upper and cultivated glasses 
only are in a social condition to feel restrictions, such, for instance, 
as those on the press, which all men, in our social condition, would 
fly from or rise against, as insupportable oppression. The good 
of the late king's reign,— the emancipation of the peasantry, — 
the promise, at least, of a representative constitution, — the removal 
of many old restrictions on trade, — and the introducing of many 
useful establishments, belong undoubtedly to the monarch himself 
— to the good-hearted, benevolent, well-meaning king. The evil 
of his reign, — the perpetual drain on the time and labour of the 
people for military service,— the attempt to make education, reli- 
gion, and all social movement subservient to the support of a go- 
vernment system, — the centralization in the hands of functiona- 
ries of all affairs of society, — and the interference of government 
with matters which are beyond the legitimate objects of govern- 
ment in any free enlightened state of society, may be ascribed to 
the influence of men around the throne, disinterested, perhaps, 
and sincere, but not en4ightened, or advancing with the age ; bred 
in function, and seeing the interests of the people through a false 
medium. With enlightened men, as Stein and Hardenberg, for 
his ministers, the late king was an enlightened ruler ; with bigots 
about him, he was a bigot ; with functionaries, a functionarist. 
There is no inconsistency between the first part of his reign and 
the last: he was evidently a good, well-meaning, weak man, led 
this way and that by each successive band of functionaries he 
employed. The whole shows impressively the working of irre- 
sponsible power on the minds of the ruler and the ruled. 

The intermeddling with the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches, 
and the unhappy attempt — unhappy for the Protestant religion 
in every country — to set up a third intermediate church, may be 
traced to the love of concentrated power over all things inherent 
in the functionarism which guides the Prussian state, combined 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER, 217 

with the system adopted in all the governments of the Continent, 
— of governing on juste milieu principle, of avoiding any decided 
mode of action, and of always taking some third conrse between 
two. Ancillon, who had been private tutor to the late king, and 
who died prime minister in 1S35, published a work in 1S2S, upon 
Vermittelung der Extreme — Mediation between Extremes. In 
a number»of essays on moral, political, and literary subjects, he 
lays down the extreme opinions upon each side — as, for instance, 
on the classical and romantic schools of literature ; and deduces 
from the absurdity of each extreme the truth of the old saying — 
"in medio tutissimus ibis." There is a saying, however, quite 
as old, and much more generally true — " there are but two waj'-s 
of doing a thing, the right and the wrong." It is the policy, or 
reasoning of weak minds that seeks a middle way between. In 
religion, in morals, in politics, as in mathematics, n. juste 7nilieic 
is a nonentity. Morally, and intellectually, there is no middle 
point between true and false, right and wrong; and practically, 
no attainment between hit and miss. There is no neutral ground 
in religion, none in morals, and none in sound politics. When 
governments attempt to extend their power beyond the legitimate 
object for which government is established in society, and would 
embrace the intellectual, moral, and religious concerns, as well 
as the material interests of their subjects, they are obliged to 
adopt a middle course between the extreme of power they would 
usurp, and the innate principle in the human mind of resistance 
to power over intellectual action. This middle course, founded on 
no principle but the evasion of applying principle to action, has 
been the line of policy of Continental statesmen during this half 
century. We have seen the principle applied at home, and sig- 
nally fail in the hands of able men, and in a popular cause — in the 
whole management and results of the Parliamentary Reform Bill 
in the hands of the late Whig ministry. The common ^ense of 
the people would accept of no trimming between right and wrong 
in a great measure. If the measure and its principle were right, 
they ought to have been followed out, and not sacrificed to any 
secondary or partial interests. The concession to Tory party 
power, — the attempt to find a middle point between right and 
wrong, to settle the constitution ui)on a fog bank, neither land 
nor water,— the attempt at a juste miliet(, in short, between 
15 



218 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

reform and no reform, disgusted the nation, ruined tiie liberal 
ministry, and for a moment has injured the cause itself. 

In Prussia we see the same results from governing on juste 
milieu principle in an opposite direction of policy ; in attempting 
to govern in matters beyond the legitimate limits of government 
— in the religion of the people. That government exists in so- 
ciety for the people, not the people for the government, is ad- 
mitted in our social economy, but not in the social economy of 
the Continent. It is practically the reverse in Prussia ; yet here 
the juste milieu principle, applied to uniting the two Protestant 
churches into one for governmental support, has failed when 
applied to the human mind; it has upset the Protestant religion 
in Germany — has opened the door to popery and to infidelity, as 
the only two asylums from arbitrary interference with independ- 
ent religious opinion, and has at last run up those who still adhere 
to the Protestant faith to a state of excitement and fanaticism — 
to the extravagant doctrines and feelings of the age of the first 
reformers. 

It is said the new sovereign sees this false position, ai^d intends 
to try back, and to abolish this mongrel Prussian church. But 
this is but conjecture, for in this highly educated land the people 
are only made acquainted with the intentions of their own govern- 
ment through foreign newspapers. In consequence of some para- 
graph in the Augsburg Algemeine Zeitung — a Bavarian news- 
paper, in which the intentions of the Prussian government are 
sometimes made known — a change in the present church is sup- 
posed to be in ' contemplation ; and pamphlets on both sides, by 
Prussian subjects, are printed abroad, at Hamburg, or Leipsic, 
and smuggled in for the information of the comitry.* 

This is the state of instruction upon their own religious aifairs, 
and this the means of information and discussion on their own 
most important interests, among a people boasting of being the 
most generally and highly educated in Europe, — whose educa- 
tional institutions, indeed, we are told by our divines, philosophers, 
and politicians, are a model for all other civilized countries, and 
the most efficient ever devised for the intellectual development, 
and the religious and moral advancement of society. 

Owing to the censorship of the press, and the consequent want 

* For instance, Die in Preussen beabsichtigte Aufhebung der Kirchligen 
Union. &c., von einem alt Preussen. Printed at Hamburg, 1841. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 219 

of interest in, as well as of information upon, the affairs of the 
country, the people in Prussia seldom talk home news or politics, 
and arc as ignorant as in Turkey of what is doing by their own 
government. Foreign newspapers — those of Leipsic, Hamburg, 
Frankfort, or Augsburg— give them the first intelligence on their 
own affairs. The persecution of the poor villagers in Silesia who 
adhered to the Lutheran church, was, of course, not a matter to 
be hinted at in Prussian newspapers ; and the circumstances would 
perhaps never have been known beyond the immediate neighbour- 
hood of the sufferers, if the Prussian government could have im- 
posed silence on others, as well as on its own subjects. As the 
latest, if not the last, of religious persecutions in Europe in civilized 
times, some minuteness in thedetailof the circumstances of it may 
be satisfactory, or will, at least, show how, in highly educated 
countries, persecution is carried on. 

The amalgamation of the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches, 
and the introduction of the new liturgy and church service, or 
agenda, met with a passive resistance everywhere. In vain royal 
edicts assured the people that no change in their religious belief, 
and no restraint on the freedom of conscience, were involved in 
the new service. The ministers in Silesia considered the attempt 
itself to assimilate the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches danger- 
ous to the pure Lutheran doctrine, and openly declared that no 
earthly power had a right to interfere with freedom of religion 
and conscience. The parish of Hermannsdorf, under its minister 
the pastor Berger, and the parish of Hoenigern, consisting of ten 
villages, under its pastor Kellner, refused obedience to the order 
of the consistory to introduce the new service, and continued to 
use the old liturgy and service, and to receive the sacrament ac- 
cording to the old Lutheran formulary — it is the body and blood 
of Christ. The people flocked from far and near to these genuine 
old Lutheran preachers. The consistory of Breslau ordered pastor 
Bergerto administer the sacrament alternately according to the new 
and the old service. He refused any such compromise of con- 
science, any such juste milieu in his religious persuasion and 
duty, and was consequently suspended. In the great parish of 
Hoenigern, pastor Kellner adopted measures for a more powerful 
opposition. Before the arrival of the commissioners of the con- 
sistory, he surrendered the church keys, and church property, into 
the hands of 40 elders chosen from the congregation, who received 



220 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

the commission with their minister at their head, singing psahns, 
and who gave a decided No to the question if they would receive 
the new Uturgy and agenda. The commissioners were not ad- 
mitted into the church ; and when they pronounced a sentence of 
suspension against Kellner, he protested against their authority as 
not representing the true Lutheran church by law established in 
the land. Kellner and his elders were arrested and imprisoned at 
Breslau ; but when the minister appointed as his successor came 
to perform the church service according to the new agenda, he 
found the church doors nailed, and a crowd of people obstructing 
the entrance. On the 20th December, 1834, a body of 400 in- 
fantry, 50 hussars, and 50 cuirassiers, marched from Breslau to 
this recusant parish of Hoenigern. The civil and clerical authori- 
ties again tried in vain to induce the people to accept the new ser- 
vice. Their elders and pastor had been twelve weeks in prison, 
but they continued obstinate ; and, at last, on Christmas eve, the 
military took possession of the church, forced open the door by a 
petard, and dispersed the people by a charge of cavalry, in which 
some twenty persons were wounded. The interim minister was 
thus intruded into the church, and the new service was performed 
on Christmas day, but it was to a congregation of soldiers only; 
for not one parishioner was to be seen in the church. It was 
necessary to resort to other measures to obtain a real congregation 
for the new service and the stormed parish church. The military 
were stationed in the villages of the parish, and each recusant 
house-holder was punished by having ten or twelve soldiers quar- 
tered on him. The soldiers themselves were to exhort their land- 
lords to go to the church, that they might be relieved from the 
ruinous quartering of men upon them, and those who would not 
conform were exposed to gross ill-usage. These are the peasants, 
who, ruined by this persecution, sought a refuge in America. 

The diffusion of education may be great in Prussia ; but its 
influences have certainly not yet reached the governing class in 
the community : for these are scenes, persecutions, and principles 
of royal power, more like the history of the religious persecutions 
in Scotland and England under the Stewart family two hundred 
years ago, than events not four years old, among the most edu- 
cated people in Europe, and in which their government itself 
took the initiative and the gratuitous perpetration. 

If such be the state of intelligence of the educating governing 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 221 

class in Prussia upon the simple point of religious toleration, one 
looks with curiosity to the state of intelligence upon religion, of 
this governed, educated people. 

Among all the aberrations from true religion, and often from 
common sense, of the countless sects our uneducated people are 
divided into, (including even Johanna Southcote's followers, the 
Mormorites, Socialists, and the thousand others which appear 
and disappear amidst our freedom of all religious opinions,) no 
aberration from the laws of morality, decency, or admitted social 
virtue, has ever been able to exist. All will be good and religious 
in their way ; and it is only in their way and ideas of being reli- 
gious, not in their way and ideas of being good, that they ditler. 
Left to act and think for themselves, the people may take differ- 
ent speculative doctrines in religion ; but in the practical doctrines 
which have a reference to real life, the public mind with us is 
well-educated, and takes invariably the one moral doctrine appli- 
cable to social affairs. In Prussia, the people, not accustomed to 
act or think for themselves, are like children escaping from 
school, and rush into speculations in religion, politics and morals, 
altogether absurd in the estimation of the more highly-educated 
public mind of this country, accustomed to apply principle to 
action as free agents in all social movement. In this way one 
must account for the singular fact, that the only positively immo- 
ral religious sect of the present times in the Christian world, arose, 
and has spread itself in the most educated part of the most edu- 
cated country in Europe— in and about Konigsberg, the capital 
of the province of Old Prussia. The Muckers are a sect who 
combine lewdness with religion. The name. Mucker, is said to 
be derived from a local or sporting term, indicating the rutting 
season of hares. The conventicles of this sect are frequented by 
men and women in a state of nudity ; and to excite the animal 
passion but to restrain its indulgence, is said to constitute their 
religious exercise. Many of the highest ngbility of the province, 
and two of the established clergy of the city, besides citizens, 
artificers, and ladies, old and young, belong to this sect ; and two 
young ladies are stated to have died from the consequences ot 
excessive libidinous excitement. It is no secret association ol 
profligacy shunning the light. It is a sect, according to the decla- 
rations of Von Tippelskirch, and of several persons of conside- 
ration in Konigsberg who had been followers of it themselves, 



222 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

existing very extensively under the leadership of the established 
ministers of the Gospel, Ebel and Diestel, of a Count Von Kaniz, 

of a lady Von S , and of other noble persons, and of several 

of the citizen class ; and it appears that a great part of the nobility 
of the province belong to it. The notice of the government was 
first attracted to its existence by a complaint to the consistory, 
of a Count Von Fink, who had been a zealous member of the 
sect, that the minister Ebel, one of the pastors of the city, and 
who is one of its leaders, had attempted to seduce his wife under 
the pretext of procreating a Messias. The consistory appointed 
two commissioners to examine, and report to government upon 
this business. The system and theory of this dreadful combina- 
tion of vice with religion are of course very properly suppressed. 
All that can be gathered from the AUgemeinen Kirchenzeitung 
of 1836, and the historical writings of that year, is that this horri- 
ble sect was spread so widely that the official people were them- 
selves slow in the investigation of the matter, and that the count- 
ess who had disclosed the practices of the sect was in danger from 
their fury, and had to be protected by the police — that a very 
strict hierarchy existed in the sect, that it was divided in three 
classes, and that the apprenticeship in the first class must be accom- 
plished before the reception into the second class : and that the 
strictest trials were required for being admitted into the third 
class, of which the members were called by a name of honour — 
that the doctrine and practice of the Muckers were a mixture of 
mysticism and gnosticism, of fanaticism and lust; and that the 
heroes and heroines who had sustained the trials of their conti- 
nence, or power over the flesh, were rewarded with the seraphim 
k^s, with which the most abominable excesses were connected. 
The government wisely suppressed the examinations and pro- 
ceedings, although copies of some of the first official reports and 
depositions had got into circulation among the curious, and the 
case was transferred from the local courts of the province to Ber- 
lin for further consideration in 1837, but nothing since has been 
made known to the public on the subject. The sect itself appears 
by Dr. Bretschneider's account of it, to have been so generally 
diffused, that he says, "It cannot be believed that the public 
functionaries were in ignorance of its existence, but that they 
were afraid to do their duty from the influence of the many prin- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 223 

cipal people who were involved in it."* In his honest indigna- 
tion he proposes as the only means of extirpating it, that all reli- 
gious meetings, all conventicles, missionary societies, religious tract 
societies, and in short all pious doings of the public among them- 
selves, should be put down by the state. This remedy is a little 
too Prussian, dreadful as the enormity is, in a civilized country, of 
such a sect having existed in this age. It is only in the history of 
Otaheite that its parallel can be found. 

A great deal of delusion on the subject of national education 
has arisen from confounding the means with the end — the admira- 
ble means for diffusing reading, writing, and such acquirements, 
first adopted on the great scale by the Prussian government, with 
the end and object of education — the raising the religious, moral, 
and social character of men as intellectual free agents. It is only 
by free institutions in society that the moral, religious, and intel- 
lectual endowments of the human^mind are exercised and edu- 
cated. The mere operations of reading and writing, nay, the 
acquisition of knowledge itself, are but the means, not the end. 
and, if carried even to the utmost perfection, do not necessarily 
exercise and educate the moral powers of the human mind — the 
judgment, the self-restraint, the self-government, the application 
of principle to action and of action to principle in our social rela- 
tions. We see every day in individuals that the mental powers 
and the moral and religious principle are in a very low, unculti- 
vated state, although education, in its ordinary sense, has done its 
utmost, and reading, writing, languages, accomplishments, and 
knowledge have been extensively acquired. There is, in reality. 
a social education of the hmnan mind, more important than its 
scholastic education, and not at all necessarily coiniected with it. 
This, the only true national or general education of a people, can 
only be given where man is a free agent living under social insti- 
tutions in which he acts for himself, politically and morally, and 
applies by himself, and not by the order and under guidance of 
the state or its functionaries, the principles of justice, law, morality, 
religion, which should guide his conduct as a member of society. 
This exercise, or education of the human mind, is wanting in the 

* See Dr. Karl Venturini's Neue Historische Schriften, Brunswick, 1839; 
also Algemeiiie Kirclien/eitun;L', Jahr, 1836, No. 50 ; also Pragmatische Ges- 
chichte unserer Zeit, das Jahr, 1835: Leipsic, 1837; for what is known to the 
public respecting the Muckers. x 



224 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

social economy of Prussia, in wiiich men are in a state of pupil- 
age as members of society, and not of free agency. No amount 
of scholastic education, of reading, writing or information, can 
make up for this want of moral self-education by the free exer- 
cise of the individual's judgment in all the social relations of life. 
It is thus that the existence of this sect of the Muckers among 
the most highly educated, that is, scholastically educated people 
in Europe, must be accounted for. Their school acquirements 
have had no influence on their moral state — or rather have had a 
pernicious influence on it, as being a part of a social system in 
which the human mind is dormant, is trained to act without think- 
ing, and under orders, instead of exerting its own judgment and 
exercising free -agency and reflection in its own moral, religious, 
and social affairs. In true moral social education, the Prussian 
people, from the nature of their government and social economy, 
necessarily stand lower than the lowest of our own unlettered 
population. 

In the importance attached to the Prussian arrangements or 
means for diffusing scholastic education, there is also much delu- 
sion. Reading, writing, arithmetic, and all other scholastic ac- 
quirements follow evidently the same law as all other human 
wants — the demand will produce the supply. Create a demand 
for such acquirements, for knowledge, for educated labour of any 
kind, and people will educate themselves up to that demand. The 
reduction of the postage in Britain has created this demand with 
us, has given to such acquirements a value almost entirely want- 
ing before, in the position of the labouring man ; and this mea- 
sure is bringing out the schoolmaster without the machinery of 
national arrangements for education. The social value or import- 
ance of the Prussian , arrangements for diffusing national scho- 
lastic education has been eviden|;ly overrated ; for now that the 
whole system has been in the fullest operation in society upon a 
whole generation, we see morals and religion in a more unsatis- 
factory state in this very country than in almost any other in the 
north of Europe ; we see no where a people in a more abject 
political and civil condition, or with less free agency, in their 
social economy, A national education which gives a nation 
neither religion, nor morality, nor civil liberty, nor political liberty, 
is an education not worth having. 

Truly, much humbug has been played off by literary men — 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 225 

unwittingly, no doubt, for they themselves were sincere dupes — 
upon the pious and benevolent feelings of the European public, 
with regard to the excellence of the Prussian educational system. 
They have only looked at the obvious, almost mechanical, means 
of diffusing instruction, viz., schools for teaching the people to 
read and write, and have, in their estimate and recommendation 
of the means, altogether overlooked the all-important circumstan- 
ces that, if these means are not in free action, they will not pro- 
duce the end— the moral and religious improvement of the people 
— and that the almost mechanical arts of reading and writing 
may be acquired with as little moral, religious, or even intellect- 
ual improvement of the human mind, as the mamial and platoon 
exercise. In their admiration of the wheels and machinery, 
these literary men have forgotten to look under the table, and see 
what kind of web all this was producing. Who could suppose, 
Avhile reading pamphlets, reviews, and literary articles out of num- 
ber on national education, and on the beautiful system, means, and 
arrangements adopted by Prussia for educating the people, and 
while lost in admiration in the educational labyrinth -of country 
schools and town schools— common schools and high schools— real 
schools — and classical schools —gymnasia — progymnasia— normal 
schools — seminariums — universities — who could suppose that 
with all this education no use of education is allowed — that while 
reading and writing are enforced upon all, thinking and the com- 
munication of thoughts are prevented by an arbitrary censorship 
of the press, sometimes strict, sometimes lax ? Who could sup 
pose that tiie only visible use to the people of Prussia of all 
this national education is, in reality, to write out official, civil, or 
military reports from inferiors to superiors — that it enters in no 
other way into their social affairs? Who could suppose, at the 
very period Victor Cousins, the Edinburgh Reviewers, and so 
many other eminent literary men of all countries were extolling 
tlic national education and general acquirement of reading in 
Prussia, and kindling around them a holy and truly virtuous 
enthusiasm among the moral and religious — for the diffusion of 
knowledge in all countries— that the exercise of worship any- 
where but in a church was pro]iibited and made criminal in Prus- 
sia by an edictal law dated the 9th March, 1834 ; and that many 
persons suffering imprisonment, civil disabilities, or other punish- 
ments for this Prussian crime of worshipping God in their own 



226 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

houses, were only liberated and pardoned by the amnesty of 
August, 1840 ? Who could suppose that while the praises of the 
educational system of the Prussian government were resounding in 
our senate and our pulpits, this educating government was driving 
by religious persecution from her educated land upwards of 600 
Christians, who went from Silesia to the wilds of America simply 
to enjoy the privileges of religious freedom, and of communicating 
at the altar according to the forms and doctrines of Luther or Cal- 
vin, rather than of his late Majesty ? Who could suppose that 
while literary men were extolling the high educational state of 
Prussia, her moral state stood so low that such a sect as the* 
Muckers could not only exist in the most educated of her pro- 
vinces, but could flourish openly, and number among its mem- 
bers, clergy, nobility, and educated and influential people ? These 
writers had evidently been deceiving themselves and the public; 
had looked no further than to the means of education ; and had 
hastily concluded that these means must necessarily be producing 
the end. If to read, write, cipher, and sing, be education, they 
are quite right— the Prussian subject is an educated man. If 
to reason, judge, and act as an independent free agent, in the reli- 
gious, moral, and social relations of man to his Creator, and to 
his fellow-men, be that exercise of the mental powers which alone 
deserves the name of education, then is the Prussian subject a 
mere drum-boy in education, in the cultivation and use of all that 
regards the moral and intellectual endowments of man, compared 
to one of the unlettered popiflation of a free country. The dor- 
mant state of the public mind on all affairs of public interest, the 
acquiescence in a total want of political influence or existence, 
the intellectual dependence upon the government or its function- 
ary in all the affairs of the community, the abject submission to 
the want of freedom or free agency in thoughts, words, or acts, 
the religious thraldom of the people to forms which they despise, 
the want of influence of religious and social principle in society, 
justify the conclusion that the moral, religious, and social con- 
dition of the people was never looked at or estimated by those 
writers who were so enthusiastic in their praises of the national 
education of Prussia. The French writers took up the song from 
the band of Prussian pensioned literati of Berlin, and the English 
from the French writers ; and so the song has gone round Europe 
without any one taking the trouble to inquire what this educa- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 227 

tional system was producing ; whether it had elevated, as it 
should have done if genuine, the moral, religious, and social 
position and character of the Prussian people as members of 
civilized society, having religious, moral, civil, and political rights 
and duties to enjoy and to perform. 

It is to us in England, with our free institutions and individual 
free-agency in all things, an inconsistency scarcely conceivable, 
that a government should give the means, nay, enforce the ac- 
quirement of the means, yet punish and suppress the use and 
exercise of the means it gives— should enforce education, yet 
deny the use and exercise of education in the duties of men, as 
social, moral, religious, thinking, self-acting beings. But this is 
the consistency of arbitrary, uncontrolled rule, and of the juste 
milieu principle of government by which it seeks to continue its 
power. This is the government of functionarism and despotism 
united, endeavouring to perpetuate itself by turning the education 
of the people and the means of living of a great body of civil 
functionaries placed over them, into a machinery for its own sup» 
port. 



CHAPTER IX. 

DISJOINTED STATE OF PRUSSIA AS ONE NATIONAL BODY.— DIFFERENT 
LAWS AND ADMINISTRATIONS.— FUNCTIONARISM.— ARISTOCRACY AND 
FUNCTIONARISM COMPARED. 

The military system of the Prussian government not only im- 
poverishes and demoralizes the people without creating that kind 
of military force which from its offensive capability gives a state 
real political weight in European affairs, but it counteracts its 
own object, and actually weakens the moral element of the de- 
fence of the country, in proportion to the perfection to which it 
carries the physical element — the military organization. As 
under this system each individual is necessarily confined very 
much to his own military locality, the free circulation of the mass 
of the population through the country is impeded, and family ties, 
ties of acquaintanceship, of petty business, of trades, oT common 
interests and objects, and a common spirit, can scarcely spread 
over adjacent provinces, much less over such a widely outstretched 
land. This military system with its pendant, the civil system, 
is the only thing common to all. The people of distant provinces 
have no common interests or objects amalgamating them into one 
whole — no liberties, laws, constitutional rights common to all, to 
rally upon. 

" What is it to me if the French are on the Rhine ?" would be 
the reasonable feeling of every man north of the Oder, when 
called out for actual service in the field — " if they come to us we 
will defend ourselves, but what have we to do with those coun- 
tries ?" The different provinces of the Prussian kingdom are, in 
fact, not amalgamated by mutual trade and communications, not 
united by their material interests. They are connected together 
only in a common bureau at Berlin, but are distinct existences in 
all that binds men together. The people can scarcely be called 
one nation. They are centralized but not nationalized. 

But is loyalty, is the devoted attachment of the subject to the 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 229 

adored and beneficent monarch, to go for nothing in this cold- 
hearted estimate of the connection between a country and its 
government, and of the impulses which lead a gallant people to 
fly to arms, and defend with their lives and fortunes the rights of 
their beloved sovereign? Let him who asks turn up a file of old 
newspapers, and he will there find his answer. He will there 
find the same effiisions of enthusiastic loyalty and devotedness 
from the same towns, provinces, and people— to King Jerom of 
Westphalia, that are now addressed to his majesty Frederick 
William IV of Prussia— to King Louis of Holland, that are now 
addressed to King William of Orange. Change names and dates, 
and the one would do for the other. It is within the verge of possi- 
bility that the same pen and the same scribe copied, and the same 
burgomasters or other official personages presented the same, the 
identical addresses to both monarchs, containing the same assur- 
ances of the inviolable attachment, the devoted zeal to the royal 
house and the beloved sovereign, of the most loyal and faithful 
of subjects. The age of loyalty expired amidst the laughter of 
the world, when the Buonaparte brood of kings and princes ex- 
changed their straw stools in Ajaccio for thrones, and were, treated 
in their Baratarias with all the honour, adulation, and devoted 
loyalty, that the "lives and fortunes men" of the day, in Holland 
and Germany, could muster. There was a moment in this half 
century, when royalty and aristocracy might have restored them- 
selves to their ancient social position by an act of great moral 
justice to society — by reducing to their original nothingness the 
swarms of counts, princes, dukes, marshals, who had been ele- 
vated to social distinction by no social, intellectual, or moral 
worth or merit, but merely by chance, favouritism, or dexterity 
in unprincipled military achievement, and by restoring to the 
countries, cities, communities, and individuals, the riches expressed 
from them by these personages in the shape of contributions, dons, 
taxes, and which, in reality, were unmilitary booty and illegal 
rapine. The allied powers overlooked or disdained, in the pride 
of victory, the opportunity of uniting the monarchical and aris- 
tocratical principle which they wished to re-establish, with the 
principle of moral justice. They themselves, by thus contaminat- 
ing the conventional reverence for the monarchical and aristo- 
cratic elements of society which they wished to revive, reduced 



230 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

that of their material interests. The constitutional states have 
endeavoured to strengthen this tie by giving the people a voice 
in the management of their own affairs, a representation in the 
legislature. Prussia endeavours to manage the material interests 
of the people without the people, without a constitution; and as 
loyalty and aristocratical influence in the social body are unde- 
niably effete as principles of national movement, her govern- 
ment is connected with her people only by two ties— that of the 
military army with its officers, and that of the civil army with its 
functionaries. Compared with Britain or France, the kingdom of 
Prussia is in a very disjointed state, owing to this entire reliance 
upon the civil and military power, without any connection be- 
tween the government and the people in the management of their 
material interests. The material interests of the people, even 
among themselves, those of the different provinces of Prussia, 
are not amalgamated. There are no common interests, common 
laws, common religion, common voice in the legislation of their 
common country, uniting all. In that most important perhaps of 
all the elements of social union in a country — the law and its 
administration— differences and confusion prevail. The different 
shreds torn from other countries, of which the kingdom is com- 
posed, retain, in some degree, each its own laws, forms of judica- 
ture, religion, and rights, inalienable even by despotic power, un- 
less with the will and concurrence of the people themselves. The 
power which alone could, with safety to the government, touch 
and change these, the power of the people in legislative assembly, 
will not be conceded by the autocratic government, so that the 
country remains in a chaotic state, governed as one but not united. 
In the country west of the Rhine, and also in those provinces 
east of that river, of which Cologne, Dusseldorf, Elberfeld, Len- 
ney, Solingen, Coblenz, are the chief towns, the French law and 
its administration, the Code Napoleon, Code de Commerce, Code 
de Procedure Civile, Code Crimi7iel, the Justice de Paix, Tri- 
buneaux de premilre Instance, Sf-c, are all retained, and are so 
firmly rooted in the affections of the people, that no government 
could venture to alter them unless by a constitutional act of a 
representative assembly of the people themselves. On this point 
these provinces have given manifestations of their sentiments not 
to be mistaken, when the government has proposed assimilations 
in the laws or tribunals to those of Prussia. This population 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 231 

living under French law is the very kernel of the Prussian king- 
dom — a concentrated population of from three to four millions, 
the most wealthy, commercial, and manufacturing, and the most 
enlightened upon their rights and wants of any perhaps in Ger- 
many. In the Province of Posen, again, at the otlier extremity 
of the kingdom, the French administration by justices de paix^ 
and by open courts of justice, and open examinations of witnesses, 
prevails over the general Prussian administration. 

In the provinces which were mediatized, and even in the pro- 
vinces which had long been under the Prussian sceptre, baronial 
courts were a species of private property which could not be 
taken away from the estate of the prince or baron. Government 
always had the needful superintendence over the patron in his 
appointing judges from legally qualified persons bred at the 
universities— as in the appointment of a clergyman by a patron 
— and also over the judge, in superintending, revising, or revers- 
ing his judicial proceedings; but such courts have the inhabitants 
of certain districts thirled to them, in cases civil or criminal, in the 
first instance ; and forms, expenses, conveniences to suitors, and 
confidence in justice, are, necessarily, very different in a multi- 
plicity of diflerent local courts established at different periods, 
and originally with different usages. Deducting the population 
of the provinces standing altogether under the Code Napoleon, of 
the remaining 10,000,000 of people under the Prussian sceptre, 
3,700,000, or above one-third of the whole population of Prussia, 
are under private jurisdiction, and 6,300,000 only under the royal 
governmental courts. Of the royal governmental courts, not 
including the higher courts of appeal, there are 7,018, and of 
private courts, 6,134, of which 128 are of the patrimony of princes, 
standesherrn or high nobility, and of provincial nobility, and 6,006 
are common baronial courts of patrimony. The judges in these 
patrimonial local courts appear to be paid either by fees, or by 
dues from all the* peasantry within the circle of the jurisdiction, 
or by land mortified in old times for the support of the judge; 
but appear to be so ill paid, that, like curates of old in Kent, one 
judge officiates in eight, or even twelve, of these local courts. 
The total number of judges in the 6,134 private courts is but 523. 
The greatest number of inhabitants subject to these local patri- 
monial courts, is in Silesia, where, out of 2,500,000 people, 1,500,- 
000 are under barony courts. The smallestinumber is in West- 



232 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

phalia, where, in a population of 1,300,000 people, only about 
80,000 are under these patrimonial jurisdictions, the system hav- 
ing been abolished almost entirely when Westphalia was erected 
into a distinct kingdom for Jerome Buonaparte. Of royal or 
regular governmental courts the number in Prussia appears to be 
7,018, and of judges paid by government 2,325, of whom 1,593 
are judges in the inferior local courts. The total number of all 
functionaries living by the administration of law, and appointed 
by government, appears to be 11,401 persons. It is the first law 
of functionarism to take care of itself. To reduce to uniformity 
the administration of law, and the law courts, among a people, 
appears one of the most needful steps towards an amalgamation 
of the whole into one nation, and, if strong measures were agoing, 
one of the most important to which a strong measure could be 
applied, especially as these patrimonial courts are founded on no 
principle of advantage or convenience to the people, or of just 
right of the baronial proprietor. But it would have been a cur- 
tailment of the living to be gained in function, a reform not to be 
expected from a government of functionaries. Until this, how- 
ever, be done, the people of Prussia can scarcely be called one 
nation. The state wants unity. 

In the provinces, also, clipped out of ancient Poland, which are 
not inconsiderable, the province of Posen alone, containing nearly 
one million and a half of inhabitants, a strong anti- Prussian spirit, 
and not a passive spirit, prevails among all ranks. Since the 
accession of the present king, the nobility there have refused to 
accept the constitution of a provincial assembly of the Standes- 
herrn, or nobles of a certain class, to deliberate upon such provin- 
cial affairs as the king may order to be laid before them — which 
is the kind of representative constitution proposed to be substituted 
in Prussia for that constitutional representation of the people in 
the legislature promised by the late king— and avowedly upon 
the principle that they do not choose to be amalgamated with 
Prussia, and placed upon the same footing as the other provinces 
of the Prussian dominions. They will stand by their Polish 
nationality. It is this spirit, and not fanaticism alone, that is at 
work in this part of the kingdom in supporting the Bishop of 
Posen and the Catholic clergy in resisting the church measures of 
government. Independently of the influence of the clergy, the 
Polish nationality ia increasing to such alarming intensity in this 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 233 

quarter, that obscure state paragraphs have been inserted in the 
foreign newspapers adn-iitted into Prussia — those of Augsburg, 
Frankfort, or Leipsic — to prepare the pubhc mind in Prussia for 
some strong measure to put it down — some attempt similar to the 
Russian, to abolish by law the Polish language, customs, and 
national distinctions. It is a curious trait in the working of a 
censorship of the press, and of pubhc opinion on public affairs, 
that an autocratic irresponsible government must condescend to 
cheat its own establishments, and avail itself of the free press of a 
foreign town to sound the public opinion of its own subjects upon 
its own intentions. Can such a state of things be permanent? 
Is sucli a principle of government as this autocratic principle, 
suitable to the advanced condition of the subjects of Prussia ? Are 
the relations between the governing and the governed what they 
ought to be ? The Prussian government wants to nationalize its 
subjects, and yet puts down the means of obtaining its own object. 
It wants to rouse a national spirit, yet would have the public 
mind passive, calm, and unagitated by political discussions of the 
press, or of public meetings, or by free communications on public 
affairs. It wants to sail with a fair gale of wind, yet to keep the 
sea smooth and unruffled by the agitation which unavoidably 
attends the gale. 

Wc hear much of the dangers and calamities of popular tumults, 
political agitations, and mobs : but we should consider that these 
are the outbursts, the vents of the very same spirit that is national 
spirit on national emergencies. They are the small evils insepa- 
rable from a great good. A mob is an assemblage of people 
actuated by a common spirit. It may be a spirit of mischief, of 
breaking windows, of throwing dead dogs and cats, of hurraing 
demagogues — still it is the identical spirit which if kindled through 
a whole nation on great occasions is the national spirit roused for 
national honour or national defence. Germany has no mobs. 
Italy has none. Mobs are peculiar to those countries of which 
the people are nationalized, free, and capable of acting together 
with a common spirit. A crowd of people gathered together arc 
not a mob, unless actuated by a common spirit for a common 
object. Half a dozen schoolboys going out to beat half a dozen 
boys of another school, are a mob: and the same spirit on a grander 
occasion, and grander scale, would be public spirit, patriotism, all 
that Prussia wants to inspire into her inert population. This 
16 



234 ' NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. _ 

susceptibility of being kindled into a common spirit for a common 
object is wanting in the character of the German people : tliey are 
trained and educated out of it. It is the policy of their govern- 
ments to repress it, rather than to keep it alive: the consequence will 
probably be, on a rupture with France, that a second edition of 
the first campaigns of the last war will be given again to the world; 
and with better troops, abler officers, superior machinery of war, 
and at least equal courage and vigour of the soldiers, Germany 
will yield to the invincible national spirit of the French. The 
moral principle will again beat the mechanical in warfare. The 
false policy of the Prussian government represses the growth of 
that nationality which would be its surest defence, because it re- 
quires the sacrifice of an obsolete principle of autocratic govern- 
ment unsuitable to the times, and to the social state of Prussia 
itself. 

The traveller inimical to hereditary aristocracy as a privileged 
state power in a community — not from prejudice, or party feel- 
ing, but on principle, as an institution adverse to a liberal social 
economy — will find much to shake his opinions, when he sits 
down here on the Continent to consider deliberately the power 
which has succeeded to aristocracy in France, Prussia, and gene- 
rally in the modern social economy of Europe. Aristocracy, it is 
evident, had worked itself out, and is effete in every country, 
even in those in which it has not been formally abolished or under- 
mined by law. Where it still stands with all its ancient supports, 
it is evidently going to decay, and has lost its roots in modern 
society. But the power which has sprung up in its place — the 
power of functionarism— is by no means satisfactory. It is aris- 
tocracy without the advantages of aristocracy. The highest func- 
tionary is not an independent man. He has been bred in a school 
of implicit, almost military submission of his own opinion to au- 
thority — has attained power through the path of subjection of his 
own principles and judgment to those of others above him. He 
has no independence of mind. Such public men in the higher 
offices of government as our hereditary aristocracy and gentry on 
all sides of politics produce— men not to be swayed from- what 
they hold to be right, and who renounce office rather than con- 
sistency and independent judgment — are not to be heard of in the 
functionarism of the Continent. The noble, generally speaking, 
is an educated man from his social position, and not edticated 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 235 

merely for functionary duties, with the contracted views of office. 
He is also, generally speaking, independent iu position and cir- 
cumstances, and the public opinion and judgment of his political 
conduct is an influence more powerful with him than with the 
office-bred functionary. He is working for a reward, and under 
a check from public opinion, which neither the supreme power of 
the state, nor its subordinate powers above him, or beside him, 
can give or take away, or compensate for, if it be lost by the 
course of his political conduct in public aff'airs. The functionary 
is not only independent of public opinion, but is bred up in a so- 
cial system which has no reference to it, in which it is set at 
naught, and in which it can give him no support or reward for 
the sacrifice of office to principle, or of his own individual mate- 
rial interests to his political opinions. As a state power, or social 
body, functionarism compared to aristocracy is much more de- 
tached from the cause of the people. It is also, as a state power, 
much more dangerous to the monarch. It is a mistake to con- 
sider functionarism, as it now exists on the Continent, a machine 
in the hands of despotic, autocratic sovereigns. It is a machine 
which governs the government. The history of France, from the 
hour that the military support of Buonaparte was broken at Mos- 
cow, shows that the crown itself is altogether in the gift of this 
new state power. The history of Belgium, of Spain, of Russia, 
tells the same fact. It is considered by many that here in Prussia, 
it is functionarism, not royalty, that rules. The body of function- 
aries are like the body of clergy in the middle ages. The men 
are of one mind, bred in one school, with one spirit. The mo- 
narch has but a small number to choose from of men around the 
throne, qualified to conduct or advise public measures. These 
are all men bred in the same way — men of the same ideas, mind, 
and spirit. It is but a change of persons and faces about him, 
not of principles or system, that the monarch attains by a change 
of ministers. He is in a position very similar to that of his pre- 
decessors in the middle ages, when churchmen held all state af- 
fairs in their hands. Since the decay of hereditary aristocracy, a 
power remarkably similar to that exercised by the priesthood in 
the middle ages — a body similarly constituted to the clerical, and 
in the same relative position to the sovereign and the people — is 
establishing a thraldom over both. The sovereign and the people 
have no free political action, or mutual working upon each other, 



236 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

through this wall of functionarism that divides them. In the 
hereditary aristocracy, the monarch had a selection of men bred 
in all varieties of social position — not as the functionary, or the 
priest, in only one contracted sphere of action and thinking — and 
of all varieties of mental power, and, although connected by their 
material interests as a body with the welfare of the people, united 
to the personality of the crown by their individual honours, pri- 
vileges, and social distinctions. The functionaries are only united 
to each other, and, like the clergy, are a body distinct both from 
the sovereign and the people, in interests and social relations. 
The habit of interfering, regulating, commanding in the concerns 
of the people, gives both to them and the people a feeling of op- 
posed interests and objects, not of confidence. The functionary 
in Germany, even in the lowest station, is always treated, and his 
wife also, with the full ceremonial of his title of office, which 
shows that his relation to the people is not one of mutual confi- 
dence. The evil effect on the industry and independence of mind 
of a people, by such a mass of government employment with 
social influence and easy living, being offered to the higher, mid- 
dle, and small capitalist classes, has been already stated ; and also 
that this is the main obstacle to the development of national in- 
dustry and wealth, and to that progress in trade and manufacture 
which the German people are at present dreaming of Free social 
institutions also, the only foundation of national prosperity, moral 
free-agency, civil and political liberty, never can grow up under 
the pressure of this state power drawn from the upper and middle 
classes, influenced by one spirit, and interested as a body in main- 
taining the importance, means of Uving and patronage, derived 
from a multitude of functions established for restraining or entirely 
superseding free social institutions, free-agency, and civil or poli- 
tical liberty. Functionarism is perhaps more adverse than aris- 
tocracy to civil liberty. Will the great social movement of the 
German people now in progress for their material interests and 
industrial prosperity be able to shake off this incubus, to break 
up the systefn of interference, superintendence, and military ar- 
rangement on the part of government in all social action, upon 
which functionarism is founded, and by which it lives ? Will the 
continental sovereigns, acting in the spirit of the German com- 
mercial league, and in reaUty for their own independence and 
power, abandon the military system of interference in all things,, 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 237 

and of governing by functionaries instead of by the people ? Will 
they fall back now, as some day they will be obliged to do, for 
support against the power of functionarism upon the power of 
the people in a representative constitution ? Or will they attempt 
to stick up again the dead branches of hereditary aristocracy 
around the throne ? The future state of society on the Continent 
turns on the solution which time and circumstances may give to 
these questions. TTie spirit raised by the German commercial 
league is hastening on their solution rapidly. One is already 
solved — the restoration of an hereditary privileged aristocracy in 
Prussia. 

The Prussian government has, of late years, been aware of the 
false position in which it stands — admitting no principle but the 
purely monarchical autocratic principle exercised by its functiona- 
ries ; and yet encouraging the growth of a state of society, wealth, 
industry, and national spirit, directly opposed to that principle, 
and which can only exist where the people partake in their own- 
government and legislation. The policy of late has evidently 
been to retrace its steps. The dissolution of the Prussian church, 
and the return to the old forms and spirit of the two branches of 
Protestantism, especially to the pietism of the old Lutheran church, 
is talked of as the wish and tendency of the court ; and it is even 
whispered, that the abolition of the leiheigenschaft, or feudal 
servitude of the peasantry, and of the privileges and exclusive 
rights of the corporate bodies in towns, is talked of in high places 
as having been a hasty measure. And undoubtedly so it was, if 
the monarchical autocratic principle was to be retained. At the 
coronation of his present majesty in August last, in Konigsberg, 
an attempt was made to begin the restoration of an hereditary 
class of nobles. It was proposed to elevate some of the wealthi- 
est of the present nobility to the rimk of princes, and to make the 
new dignity hereditary in the eldest sons, instead of descending aS 
the present titles do, to all the children ; and the new nobles were 
to be bound to entail a certain proportion of their estates upon 
the successors to their titles. The proposal, however, met with 
no acceptance. With almost all, the estates were so burdened 
that it could not be done without injury to their creditors. Others 
considered it would be an injustice to their other children. Some 
declined the proffered honours point blank. The diet or provin- 
cial assembly of the standeshcrrn of Konigsberg for deliberating 



238 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

on the provincial affairs laid before them— which is the substitute 
given for a constitutional government — although assembled for 
the coronation, and to whose members this offer was made, re- 
jected it, and even adopted a petition for a representative consti- 
tution of the people, as promised to them by the late king under 
date of the 25th May, 1815, to which they referred. The city of 
Breslau, the third in importance in the kingdom, standing next to 
Berlin and Konigsberg, adopted a similar petition and reference. 
Cologne also made a similar move. These are strong indications 
of the rising spirit of the times — of the split between things as 
they are and the sentiments of the influential classes of the coun- 
try. A retrograde movement is evidently impossible ; and it is 
equally impossible to stand still, with the whole material interests 
of the people, and their opinions and feelings for political exist- 
ence in the legislation excited by the spirit of the German com- 
mercial league, and pushing on the government in a path which 
•the government is pledged to take, in which its steps are watched 
by the people, and which necessarily and unavoidably leads to 
free institutions, a representative constitution, and the abolition of 
the present sole monarchical, autocratic principle. 



CHAPTER X. 

BERLIN.— MANAGEMENT OF THE POOR IN BERLIN.— DETAILS CONCERN- 
ING THE MANAGEMENT OF THE POOR. 

Berlin has the air of the metropoUs of a kingdom of yester- 
day. No Gothic churches, narrow streets, fantastic gable ends, 
no historical stone and lime, no remnants of the picturesque ages, 
recall the olden time. Voltaire in satin breeches and powdered 
peruke, Frederic the Great in jackboots and pigtail, and the 
French classical age of Louis XIV, are the men and times Berlin 
calls up to the imagination of the traveller. A fine city, however, 
Berlin is, — very like the age she represents — very fine and very 
nasty. Berlin is a city of palaces, that is, of huge barrack-like 
edifices with pillars, statues, and all the regular frippery of the 
tawdry school of classical French architecture — all in stucco, and 
frequently out at elbows, discovering the naked brick under the 
tattered yellow faded covering of plaster. The fixtures which 
strike the eye in the streets of Berlin are vast fronts of buildings, 
clurtisy ornaments, clumsy statues, clumsy inscriptions, a profu- 
sion of gilding, guard-houses, sentry-boxes ; the movables are 
sentries presenting arms every minute, officers with feathers and 
orders passing unceasingly, hackney droskies rattling about, and 
numbers of well-dressed people. The streets are spacious and 
straight, with broad margins on each side for foot passengers ; 
and a band of plain flag-stones on these margins makes them 
much more walkabic than the streets of most continental towns. 
But these margins are divided from the spacious carriage-way in 
the middle, by open kennels telling the nose unutterable things. 
These open kennels are boarded over only at the gateways of the 
palaces to let the carriages cross them, and must be particularly 
convenient to the inhabitants, for they are not at all particularly 
agreeable. Use reconciles people to nuisances which might be 
easily removed. A sluggish but considerable river, the Spree, 



240 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

Stagnates through the town, and the money laid out in stucco 
work and outside decoration of the houses would go far towards 
covering over their drains, raising the water by engines, and send- 
ing it in a purifying stream through every street and sewer. If 
bronze and marble could smell, Bkicher and Bulow, Schwerin 
and Zeithen, and duck-winged angels, and two-headed eagles in- 
numerable, would be found on their pedestals holding their noses 
instead of grasping their swords. It is a curious illustration of 
the difference between the civilization of the fine arts and that of 
the useful arts, in their influences on social well-being, that this 
city, as populous as Glasgow or Manchester, has an Italian opera, 
two or three theatres, a vast picture gallery, and statue gallery, 
and museums of all kinds, a musical academy, schools of all de- 
scriptions, an university with 142 professors, the most distinguished 
men of science who can be collected in Germany, and is undoubt- 
edly the capital, the central point of taste in the fine arts, and of 
mind and intelligence in literature, for a vast proportion of the 
enlightened and refined of the European population — and yet has 
not advanced so far in the enjoyments and comforts of life, in the 
civilization of the useful arts, as to have water conveyed ^n pipes 
into their city and into their houses. Three hundred thousand 
people have taste enough to be in die-away ecstasies at the sing- 
ing of Madame Pasta, or the dancing of Taglioni, and have not 
taste enough to appreciate or feel the want of a supply of water 
in their kitchens, sculleries, drains, sewers, water-closets. The 
civilization of an English village is, after all, more real civiliza- 
tion than that of Paris or Berlin. 

Berlin, however, has one noble pre-eminence over every city of 
great population in Europe, perhaps, and certainly over every city 
in Britain, in the management and care of her poor, and in the 
efficient arrangements for the relief of the distressed, and the sup- 
pression of mendicity, carried on by the gratuitous services of the 
middle class of her citizens. This covers a multitude of nuisances. 

Berlin with a population* of nearly 300,000 souls has no poor- 

* The population returns of Prussia, although made up with much apparent 
care by her functionaries, are not quite to be depended upon; for it appears 
that even in the capital, in 1841, a mistake has crept in by the householders 
including only their own families, but not their casual lodgers, in their returns 
of the members of their households; and it is said that forty thousand people 
at least, some say sixty or eighty thousand, have been omitted, who really 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 241 

rates, no beggars, and no visible obtrusive policemen at every 
twenty paces, as in our great cities, to prevent mendicity. It is 
the first feature in the social economy of this city that strikes the 
traveller, and the first subject that claims his inquiries ; for Berlin 
has very little trade or manufacturing employment for its labouring 
class ; the land around is a sandy, barren soil unsuitable for any 
quick rotation of crops, and therefore affording comparatively 
little employment to labour ; and consequently the destitution and 
misery must be as great and clamant in Berlin as in Edinburgh 
or Glasgow ; yet it is not seen. No town is so free from beggary, 
or the appearances of extreme want and privation. How is this 
managed ? The inquiry may be useful, and may suggest some- 
thing applicable to the management of the poor in some of our 
great towns. Edinburgh, for instance, with about two-thirds of 
the population, is very similar in its means and resources of living 
to Berlin. Both cities exist not by any great trade or manufac- 
tures seated in them, but by the concentration of the business of 
the country, by the courts of law and head-establishments, and by 
resident families of fortune. Both cities, too, are the head-quarters 
of the poor and of those verging towards poverty, from all other 
parts of the country. Berlin is even more exposed to pauperism 
not properly her own than Edinburgh or Glasgow, because her 
garrison is 10,000 men; that of Potsdam, at an hour's distance by 
railway, is 7,000 ; that of Spandau, at three or four leagues' dis- 
tance, is very considerable ; and one-third of these men are dis- 
charged every year. Some of these have no home to return to, 
and no trade to live by, and no disposition to work and less to 
re-enlist, and they hang about the capital as servants, helpers, and 
small-job men, and have acquired, by residence, a claim to sup- 
port, and, at last, they with their families fall into utter destitution. 
Yet Edinburgh is overrun with beggars — want and misery are, 
day and night, abroad in her streets— and her householders com- 
plain loudly of their poor-rates. Berlin, with as great an amount 
of poverty, and as great a burden upon her householders to relieve 
that poverty, contrives, at least, to make the means fCiIfil the end 
far better than Edinburgh, contrives to avoid the direct imposition 
of a poor-tax or rate with all its evils, although no doubt the 

dwell in Berlin. — ^This mistake is stated in the newspapers of August, 1841, 
to have been just discovered in the population returns of Berlin. 



242 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

public bears the burden of supporting or succouring those who 
would perish without that aid, but does so under another name, 
and contrives to relieve effectually all real distress, and to suppress 
entirely mendicity. This subject is worth inquiring into. 

The management of the poor in great towns in Prussia was in 
the hands of government commissioners until 1S21, when it was 
given over to the municipalities; and these were required to 
appoint poor directors, each direction to consist of the burgomaster 
as president, the members of the magistracy, members of the 
assembly of the town deputies, or town council, and members 
chosen by each parish. The magistrates and town deputies are 
changeable each year, being ex officio members, and in Berlin at 
least they amount to twelve; the others, amounting to twelve also, 
are permanently elected. The members of the poor direction re- 
ceive no pay or emolument. The clergy, and the medical men of 
the city, may be joined to the direction by the directors ; and the 
chief of the pohce, in cities in which the police is not managed by 
the magistracy, is ex officio a member. The duty of the poor 
directors is the general care of the poor in Berlin, and of the poor 
schools, the orphan house, the workhouse, the infirmary, the 
hospital for old people, and three smaller hospitals ; and the 
charge, direction, and superintendence of all the funds and ex- 
penditure and management of the poor. When the poor direct- 
ors entered on their office, great confusion in accounts, great want 
of system, and great mismanagement in relieving the poor, existed. 
They began with taking one of the police districts in which there 
was little pauperism, and placing it experimentally under a poor 
commission. The plan was found to work so well, that between 
1821 and 1825 they had divided the whole city into fifty-six dis- 
tricts, each under its poor commission, the commissioners being 
more or less numerous according to the number of poor usually 
in their districts, but in general being from five to nine, and each 
commission having within its own district, if possible, its own 
physician, surgeon, oculist, and apothecary, whose services are 
paid, and are not received gratuitously.* The poor commissioners 

* The services of the medical men are paid for monthly, and the medicines 
also, because the residence of a medical man and an apothecary within each 
poor district was thought necessary. By accepting grutuitous services, the 
poor commissioner might have to send his sick poor all over the town for 
medical assistance, and the poor might be put off with the attendance of a 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 243 

receive no pay or emolument ; but are benevolent persons, and 
the most respectable in tlieir districts, who, without regard to their 
religious persuasion, or to their civil occupations, are chosen out 
of a list presented to them by the poor commissioners of the dis- 
trict as vacancies happen to occur, by the poor directors, and re- 
quested to accept the office. Each poor commissioner has a distinct 
section of his district put under his charge and SLiperintcndence, 
and the district is so divided that in general each poor commis- 
sioner has not more than ten or twelve paupers receiving relief to 
look after. In 183S the number of the poor commissioners was 
607 in all, and of all classes of citizens. I find a butcher and a 
master chimney-sweeper among them, and landed proprietors, 
silk manufacturers, merchants, bakers, distillers, but neither a 
clergyman nor a lawyer in the whole list. They are considered 
less suitable for the distribution impartially and economically. 
At the end of each month, the poor commissioners of each district 
meet together in a conference, to make a monthly report of all 
the proceedings in their respective subdivisions, and to settle the 
business of the month. As the whole efficiency of the system 
turns upon the poor commissioners, both as to the relief of the 
distressed, and the just economy to the public, it is necessary to 
go into a detail of the routine of their duties. 

If a pauper desires relief, he must apply to the president of the 
poor Commission of the district in which he resides, who receives 
the application, inquires into the grounds of it, into the situation, 
family connections, and other circumstances of the applicant; and 
if it be not so utterly groundless as to be summarily dismissed, 
refers it to the poor commissioner in whose section of the district 
the pauper is living. He sends another poor commissioner from 
another section of the district, to make inquiry also in the neigh- 
medical apprentice or student, instead of commanding the best assistance. 
Tlie regular monthly payment, also, makes it an object for medical men be- 
ginning business to live in the poor districts of the town, which otherwise 
would be left without medical assistance near. So great is the attention to Uie 
sick poor, that steam baths, sulphuretted baths, and other artificial baths are 
administered; and they are even sent to drink mineral waters, and to sea 
bathing at Swinemunde. The German medical men at present, and their 
patients, seem to have great faith in the etlicacy of baths prepared artificially, 
and in sea baths, mineral waters, and such remedies, which perhaps our me- 
dical men regard as a mere consolatio animi — as medical science itself is defined 
to be by Scaliger. 



244 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

bourhood, and at the last place of residence in the city. These 
commissioners inquire of the landlord, the neighbours, the last 
employer ; and in the monthly meeting of the whole commis- 
sioners of the district, a report of the result of the inquiry is 
made, and the case decided. In urgent cases, any one of the 
poor commissioners of the district may, with consent of tlie presi- 
dent, grant an immediate relief, but this must be reported at 
the first monthly meeting of the whole. If the pauper has ap- 
plied for relief, and the president of the poor commission finds 
that, provided the pauper's statements be correct, it should be 
granted, he takes an examination book with him in which there 
are twenty-five printed questions, which the applicant is bound 
to answer, concerning his age, state of health, capability of work, 
former trade or occupation, causes of its not supporting him now, 
number, age, and capability of work of the members of the 
family, situation of the relations who by law are obliged to sup- 
port him (in Prussia people are legally obliged to support, if able, 
their nearest blood relations— the if makes it an inquisitorial and 
objectionable law), and if there be any children in the family, 
whether they have been vaccinated, confirmed, sent to school, 
&c. This examination book is handed to the two commissioners 
appointed to examine into the case, who have also their printed 
questions in it, to be replied to by the result of their inquiries 
concerning the applicant ; and if sickness, or physical inability is 
stated by the pauper, the physician of the commission writes his 
testimony also in the book ; and lastly the determination of the 
district poor commission upon the case, as to granting or denying 
relief of a permanent kind, is written in this examination book, 
and carried into effect by the commissioners. This examination 
book is the groundwork of a standing personal document, or cer- 
tificate of the case of each individual pauper, or alms-receiver, by 
which every circumstance relative to his pauperism is known. If 
he changes his abode, and applies to the president of the new 
district poor commission for relief, as being a pauper from another 
district, the examination book is sent for, but the president pro- 
ceeds entirely as if it were a new case, and only takes the former 
as subsidiary to the inquiries instituted by their own commis- 
sioners ; and, as each commission sees with its own eyes, it may 
happen that the decision of the new district commission may 
differ from the former. The examination book follows the pan- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 245 

per wherever he goes as pauper, and his case, after repeated ex- 
aminations, can scarcely be one not entitled to relief. 

In cases of medical assistance being required, the applicant, to 
save delay, gets a note from the poor commissioner of the sec- 
tion in which he lives, and takes or sends it to the president to 
be countersigned, whicli is done after a summary inquiry into the 
poverty of the sick pauper, and it is a sufficient order to the 
medical officers of the district for attendance and the necessary 
medicines. 

The distribution of orders for wood or turf, or money for the 
purchase of firing, given, 'very often, not to'the single pauper 
himself, but to his landlord to keep the house regularly warm, is 
another part of the duty of the poor commission of each district. 

The school attendance of the children of the paupers is a mat- 
ter also under their special superintendence. 

Every month the members of the district poor commission 
meet, decisions on the claims are made, the acts of the individual 
commissioners and president, in ordering, each in his own divi- 
sion or ward of the district, relief, medicine, free school teaching, 
&c., are reported, and a protocol is drawn up by the president, 
accompanied by all the documents, the current account of the 
disbursements of the month, and the estimate of what is wanted, 
for the succeedmg month, and handed to the poor directors. The 
protocol is retained, and the current account returned discharged, 
to the poor commission, it being ruled and printed in twelve 
divisions, or columns, so as to be the account of a whole year. 
To save trouble as much as possible to the poor commissioners, 
who give their time gratuitously, every thing is printed in forms, 
and only one account of their disbursements — this monthly ac- 
count as made up at their monthly meetings — is required. 

As messengers to the poor commissioners, there are twenty-three 
town sergeants who receive pay, and who, with twelve poor wards, 
are specially charged with the arrest of beggars, and taking them 
to the workhouse ; and as they know the actual paupers, and are 
daily among them, moving about, and doing the messages of the 
poor commissioners in each division and district, to and from the 
poor,4his certainty of being known prevents the pauper from beg- 
ging. In the actual distribution of relief to paupers, this is the 
only expense. Medical attendance, medicines, bandages for rup- 



246 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

tures, spectacles for old people, are disbursements of the fund itself, 
not of the administration of it. 

The expenditure in one year, 1838, appears to have been — 

Prussian Thalers. £ 

For support of 4,927 persons and families - - - 99,136 = 14,723 

For medical attendance, medicine, food, bandages, and sick 
expenses, including burials. 25,646 cases of sick poor 
appear to have been treated, out of which 1,373 persons 

died 41,488= 6,161 

Extraordinary or occasional assistance with money - 32,679 =: 4,853 

Fire-wood, turf, &c., distributed . - - . 10,502 = 1,559 

Support of poor belonging to Berlin in other places - 1,022= 151 

Education of depraved or morally neglected infants in a par- 
ticular school established for that purpose - - 1,240 = 184 

186,067 = 27,631 
The House of Correction or Workhouse, Orphan Hospital, 
and several hospitals for decayed poor, and having funds 
in part for their support, and also the infirmary - - 180,464 = 26,801 



In all 366,531 = 54,432 

Of this sum applied to the support of the poor, part comes from 
permanent funds left for the endowment of the hospitals, or from 
legacies left to the poor, part from government for the house of 
correction and police, and also as occasional gifts from the king, 
part from voluntary contributions of the inhabitants and from 
gifts of benevolent persons, but the greater part of it, in 1838, 
about 239,000 thalers, or 35,495/. sterling, out of the general chest 
of the city taxes.* These municipal taxes are extremely heavy. 
They are levied on the value of the house, and the supposed value 
or income of the trade carried on by the householder, as estimated 
by the commissioners for charging it. One householder, in good 
but not first-rate business as an innkeeper, reckoned his direct 
taxes at 400 thalers, of which the government taxes on his house 
and trade would be about 100 thalers ; the rest was all town taxes. 
This is no doubt a poor-rate in reality, but mixed up and joined 
with other municipal taxes ; but they consider in Berlin that the 
moral effect on the poor is very different, and that it is the true 
way in which a poor-tax should be levied. It comes to the poor 

* 11,223Z. appears to be the sum assessed or estimated, in 1841, for the 
support of the indoor or workhouse poor in the city of Edinburgh. Berlin, 
with about one-third more of population, pays above twice as much money 
for the support of its indoor or woi'khouse poor as Edinburgh, viz., 26,801/. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 247 

as a relief, gift, or donation, not as part of a fund on which they 
have a just claim as being specially raised for their use, and to 
which they have a right. The exact numbers of poor cannot be 
made out from the reports of the poor directors hitherto published, 
because, as in this for the year 1838, the number receiving continu- 
ous monthly relief in this one year — 4,927 persons — comprehends 
heads of families as well as single paupers; and the time of the 
poor commissioners being altogether gratuitously given, it would 
be an unreasonable burden upon them to require any returns, 
such as of numbers in each family, that can be avoided. 

The accounts which the passing traveller can give of the man- 
agement of the poor in Berlin are calculated and intended rather 
to excite than to gratify curiosity and inquiry. The subject is 
necessarily connected with details which would swell into volumes. 
It is of general interest, however, to give such a sketch of the 
whole system, as may be a groundwork for those who will direct 
their inquiries specially to this subject with a view of introducing 
some of its arrangements that may be suitable into our own social 
state and pauper management. To the actual etiiciency of the 
system in the two great points of relieving fully, humanely, and 
economically, all real distress — and in the suppression of all street 
begging, and much vice and idleness — the most hasty traveller 
who inquires at all into the state of the poor, or who even contents 
himself with his personal observation as a stranger walking about 
the town, must bear the fullest testimony. The following detached 
information and hints will assist those interested, in forming an 
idea of some of the parts of the machinery. 

The whole, according to the sketch given above, consists of a 
board of poor directors, and of local boards of poor commissioners : 
the former having the general control, superintendence, and finance 
under its charge — the latter being in the immediate contact with 
the poor, dispensing relief, each board in its own circle or division 
of the city, and each commissioner in his own section or sub- 
division of that circle only, and under the checks in each case of 
relief, first, of the president of the local board ; secondly, of the 
monthly conference of the members of the local board, taking 
each case into consideration ; and, thirdly, of regular sifting exa- 
mination, by means of the examination books, into each case, 
leaving nothing to the vague opinion, or vague inquiry, or indi- 
vidual feelings of compassion of any one commissioner, however 



248 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

correct his personal knowledge may be, but placing every item 
regarding the pauper's case upon record. It was necessary, how- 
ever, to the proper working of this machinery to know not merely 
what relief was afforded to each distressed person by the poor 
commissioners of his locality, which the monthly account and 
vouchers handed in from each monthly meeting of the poor com- 
missioners to the board of directors, and discharged each month 
as far as regards the disbursements of the commissioners, suffi- 
ciently show; but it was necessary to have a check upon the 
parties relieved, that they should not be receiving relief secretly 
at the same time from other local boards, or from other charitable 
establishments. The board of directors, therefore, took powers 
from government, obliging all public charitable institutions, kirk 
sessions, hospitals, and others to furnish lists of the persons, and 
amounts of relief upon their fund. They also invited all private 
charitable societies, and charitable persons or families who have 
regular poor pensioners upon their bounty, to furnish .similar lists. 
Out of these, and the examination books, and monthly account 
and vouchers of each board of local poor commissioners, the 
board of directors formed a regular head book or ledger, in which 
each individual pauper has his account for himself, as in a bank- 
er's books, and from which it can at once be seen whether the 
poor commissioners of any district are bestowing too much on 
any individual, or if he is drawing aid from any other charity ; 
and the president of the local poor commissioners can at once see 
if a claimant in his district is or has been in receipt of aid from 
other charities. The charitably disposed also can refer to it, to 
know if the poor they take an interest in are in real distress, and 
to what amount they should be relieved. This ledger contains 
the accounts of the poor of thirty-two different poor boxes, such 
as church poor-money raised by donations at the church doors, 
charitable legacies, unions for the poor of particular corporations, 
&c., as well as of the poor under the poor commissioners of the 
fifty-six poor divisions of the city. The receipt and disbursement 
of their own funds remain with these institutions as before, and 
under their own direction, only they must furnish such lists of the 
appropriation of it to the poor directors, that the individuals they 
support, wholly or in part, shall not come upon the public for the 
whole of their support There seems no jealousy, now that the 
whole system is in work, between the two. On the contrary, 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 249 

many poor, especially aged and infirm persons, arc supported by 
the charitable institutions as far as their funds go, and the balance 
made up by the poor directors ; and where there are houses, fuel 
or other conveniences on a larger scale than required for the 
number of paupers whom the private funds of the institution can 
support, it is a saving to the public. Where such aid is given, 
the economy of the institution, as to salaries, is under the poor 
directors. 

An establishment of some considerable expense in clerks is 
unavoidable in such a system of book-keeping in which, in one 
year (1838) nearly five thousand heads of accounts (4,927) were 
kept in the single division of persons receiving continuous monthly 
support. In the same year 25,6-16 cases of sick poor (of whom 
1373 died, and were interred principally by the public) were 
treated by the medical men at the public expense-. It appears 
that the heads of accounts in all, open in one year, amounted to 
17,267, and of course considerable expense in the administration 
of such a mass of pen and ink business is unavoidable. But the 
expense is, next to the efficiency, the great point. The efficiency 
of the Berlin system is undeniable ; but what is the expense of 
the administration of it? In a given year (1828), the first I be- 
lieve in which the whole system being in full play, the details of 
the expense of the standing establishment were given to the pub- 
lic in a report by the poor directors (and which not being stated 
in any of their subsequent reports appear not to have been since 
essentially altered), the following was the permanent salaried es- 
tablishment: 

Tliulers. £ 

Tlie chief inspector, and secretary of the board. Salary - 950= 142 

Assistant secretary, who also in the forenoon keeps the 
protocol of all applications made at the application office, 
of all petitions which do not enter into the journal, but 
are referred to the poor commissioners, and also keeps 
the ledger of the disbursements to the poor out of extra- 
ordinary funds not entering into the regular receipts or 
• disbursements— such as presents of fuel, clothing, money 
for special objects - - - - - 550 = S3 

An accountant, receiving also some remuneration from the 
boxes of the institution he keeps the accounts of 

Cash keeper and a comptroller, 2; receiving in all 

Register, and journal keepers, 5 - 

Clerks, 7 

17 



300 = 


45 


1,400 = 


208 


1,670 = 


248 


1,290 = 


187 



Thalers. 


£ 


6,160 = 


913 


816 = 


124 



120 = 


17 


4,347 = 


645 


790 = 


112 



250 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

Brought forward 

Office servants, 3 - 

[These are messengers between the different mem- 
bers and branches of the poor direction. One also is 
the housekeeper, and one files the vouchers and docu- 
ments.] 

A revising commissioner ----- 400 = 59 

A paid poor commissioner-assistant for two suburbs of the 
city inhabited almost wholly by paupers, and whom on 
account of their numbers, the ordinary poor commissioners 
could not attend to without assistance 

Town sergeants, 12 persons . - - 

District messengers, 6 persons . - . 

[These are messengers between the poor commis- 
sioners in the different districts, and the individual pau- 
pers, and are paid days' wages. They are not exactly 
poor officers on salaries, but are persons taken from 
among the poor, v/ho, at any rate, would require aid for 
their families.] 

A master poor-watchman or poor-ward - - . 272 = 40 

Poor-wards under him, 12 persons - - - 1.312 = 194 

[These belong properly to the police, as miich as to 
the poor establishment. They have a uniform, and their 
duty is to arrest beggars, and bring them, as distressed 
persons, to the poor commission of the district, the poor 
director's room, or to the workhouse.] 

The total administration cost yearly, in 1828 - - 14,221 = 2,112 

The poor directors keep an application-room open to the public, 
at which the assistant secretary attends, and in which a day-book 
is kept of all applications of the poor for relief, and of appeals 
from the decisions of any of the district poor commissions, if the 
pauper thinks he ought to get relief and has been refused ; and 
at which any petitions or claims they may have to make are 
drawn out, and any advicte they require given without expense ; 
and it is also a kind of house of call for work and workmen, if 
any labourers are wanted for such work as the poor can do. The 
poor commissioners find here the information they require respect- 
ing applicants for relief in their districts ; and the benevolent can 
learn if the objects they are relieving are really necessitous, and 
to what extent their charity is required.* Among the charitable 

* The following reports of the poor directors are interesting on this subject. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 251 

establishments under charge of the poor directors one seems very 
interesting— the school for neglected and morally depraved chil- 
dren. These children are first placed in a lazarette for fourteen 
days, in one wing of the hospital, to be sure that they are free 
from infectious disease ; the sick are on the other side, and the 
children are only admitted to mix with the others when perfectly 
clean and well ; and their moral defects also in some degree as- 
certained. Useful trades and women's work are tanght the boys 
and girls in these institntions. 

It is generally complained of in the Prussian towns, that the 
abolition of the old corporation system bj' which liberty to set 
up in any trade or handicraft was restricted by apprenticeships, 
journeymanships, and freedom of the corporated body of each 
trade, has filled them with pauperism. The freedom of the city 
or town as burgess, which in Berlin costs thirty thaJers, is all that 
is now required to entitle any one to carry on any trade or handi- 
craft in it ; and young men, as soon as they have completed their 
three years of military service, set up as masters in the trade they 
were bred to, marry, and in a few years their families come upon 
the public for support. It is evidently not the freedom of trade 
that produces this evil, but the attempt to unite freedom of trade 
with the Prussian military system. The young men have lost, if 
they had ever acquired, the expertness and readiness at their 
work, and the habits of steadiness and industry necessary in 
every handicraft, by their military service ; and are arrived at 
the age, after three years' service in the army, when they must 
settle in life. The two systems cannot work together in society. 
The Prussian military system also gives no such outlet as our 
army does to the unsteady class of half-bred tradesmen who 
want prudence, forethought, or skill, to thrive in their handicrafts. 
Our land and sea service, colonies, and emigration, relieve the 
country of a considerable proportion of this class who in Prussia 
marry, and become, in effect, an increasing fund of pauperism 
in the community. The Prussian military system is thus work- 
ing out pauperism in two ways — by impoverishing, and preparing 

Die oofrcntlicho Arinpnpnpa;c in t^cilia dar^psiclll von dor Anncn Dircotioii. 
]5eilin, 1828 ; also, Uel)er.sichtclerbei don Armen-Commissionen der Residenz 
Berlin bestehenden Geschaefts Fuehrunjr, Berlin, 1836; and Jahres Bericht 
iieber die Armen-Verwaltiing in Berlin pro 1838. 



252 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

for pauperism, the working class — and by not absorbing those 
whose habits, temperament, and conduct tend to bring them to 
pauperism, and who with us, but for the military service, would 
be paupers, or engendering pauperism. If England, notwith- 
standing all her employments and outlets for pauperism, is over- 
whelmed with it, what will Germany become as a manufactur- 
ing country, breeding paupers in the same ratio as England, yet 
without any outlets for them in colonies, standing armies, fleets, 
or commercial shipping ? The manufacture of pauperism must 
increase faster than all her other manufactures. 



CHAPTER XI. 

LEIPSIC— BOOK TRADE— ITS EFFECTS ON THE LITERATURE— ON THE 
CHARACTER— ON THE SOCIAL ECONOMY OF THE GERMANS.- THE GER- 
MAN THEATRE— ITS INFLUENCE.— THE EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES IN 
SOCIETY.— THE SCOTCH AND THE GERMANS COMPARED. 

Leipsic, remarkably in contrast with Berlin, is a city of the 
middle ages — balconies projecting into the streets, old forms and. 
fashions about the people and their dwellings, — nothing of the 
Parisian air, nothing of the Frenchified German air about them. 
Everything is downright German, and plain unsophisticated Ger- 
man burgess style. This is the capital of the middle class of Ger- 
many — of the class which has nothing to do with nobility, or with 
military, or civil service as a way of living, which has not its 
great money merchants, bankers, contractors of loans, million- 
aires, like Frankfort; but has its very substantial, and some very 
wealthy, quiet-living burgesses. The traveller who could get 
into the domestic society of this town — which even native Ger- 
mans cannot easily do — would sec, it is said, more of old Ger- 
many, more of the houses, habits, and modes of living of two 
centuries ago, than in any other place. A very respectable peo- 
ple these Leipsicers are, and precisely because they affect to be 
nothing more. Their book trade is of such importance, that the 
booksellers, of whom there are reckoned at the fairs about 560, 
and many of them settled in Leipsic, have a large exchange of 
their own to transact their business in. It is not, however, the 
printing and publishing in Leipsic itself, that is the basis of these 
book fairs, but the barter of publications between booksellers 
meeting there from different points. The bookseller, pnrhaps. 
from Kiel on the Baltic, meets and exchanges publications with 
the bookseller, perhaps, from Zurich, gives so many copies of his 
publication — a dull sermon possibly — for so many of the other's 
— an entertaining novel. Each gets an assortment of goods by 
this traffic, such as he knows will suit his customers, out of a 



254 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

publication of which he could not, perhaps, sell a score of copies 
within his own circle ; but a score sold in every bookselling circle 
in Germany gets rid of an edition. Suppose the work out and 
out stupid and unsaleable, still it has its value ; it is exchangeable, 
should it be only at the value of wrapping-paper, for works less 
unsaleable, and puts the publisher in possession of a saleable 
stock and of a variety of works. His profit also not depending 
altogether upon the merit of the one work he publishes, but upon 
the assortment for sale he can make out of it by barter, he can 
afford to publish works of a much lower class as to merit, or sale- 
able properties, than English publishers. The risk is divided, and 
also the loss, and not merely divided among all the booksellers 
who take a part of an edition in exchange for part of their own 
publications ; but in effect is divided among the publications. The 
standard work, or the new publication of an author of celebrity, 
pays the risk or loss of the publisher of the bad, unsaleable work, 
as by it he is put in possession of the former, of the more saleable 
goods. The loss, also, compared to that of an English publisher, 
is trifling, because, although the German press can deliver mag- 
nificent books, yet the general taste of the public for neat, fine, 
well-finished productions in printing as in all the useful arts, is 
not by any means so fully developed as with us, and is satisfied 
with very inferior paper made of much cheaper materials. The 
publisher also is saved the very important expense of stitching, 
boarding, or binding all he publishes, by his own capital, the 
private buyer generally taking his books in sheets. The bound 
or made-up books in booksellers' shops are but few, and generally 
only those of periodical or light literature. The advantage to 
' literature of this system into which the book trade has settled is, 
that hundreds of works see the light, which with us would never 
get to the printing-house at all. The disadvantage is, that it en- 
courages a prolixity of style, both in thinking and expression ; 
two or three ideas are spun out into a volume, and literature is 
actually overwhelmed and buried under its own fertility and 
fruits. No human powers could wade through the flood of pub- 
lication poured out every half year upon every conceivable sub- 
ject. Selection even, in such an overwhelming mass, is out of the 
question, unless the catalogue-selection of judging from the repu- 
tation of the author, that the book may be worth reading. In our 
small book-world, periodical criticism — our quarterlies and lite- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 255 

rary newspapers — keeps the ordinary reader up to the current 
stream of literary production ; but who could get through the pile 
of periodicals published in Germany, and find time to eat, drink, 
and sleep ? It is as at their table d'hote — the guest tastes this 
thing, and tastes that, and rises without having made so whole- 
some and substantial a meal as he would have done from one or 
two dishes. This superabundance, and the excess of employ- 
ment to the mind about otlier people's ideas, influences the gene- 
ral literature of Germany. Men whose talents entitle them to be 
original in literary production, are but imitative. Their great 
original authors, Goethe, Schiller, or Richter, or our great authors, 
Shakspeare, Scott, Byron, give the tunes which the crowd of 
German writers are whistling through the streets. This imitative 
turn, and the excess of literary production, influence even the 
material interests and character of the German people. In poli- 
tics, in social economy, in religion, and perhaps even in morals 
and the regulation of conduct, principles and opinions seem to 
have no time to take root, and to influence the actual doings of 
men— conviction is bnt loosely connected with action. The lat- 
ter by no means follows the former, even when not drawn aside 
by prejudice, passion, or self-interest. All is speculation, not 
reality. 'Every German seems to have two worlds for himself — a 
world of idea, and a world of reality; and the former appears to 
have as little connection with the latter, as the evening of the 
monarch on the stage with the morning of the actor in his lodg- 
ings. This division of life into two distinct existences, this living in 
a world of reveries, this wide separation between ideas and reali- 
ties, between thoughts and actions, common perhaps to all men 
of intellectual cultivation, is so widely difl'used in Germany that 
it sensibly influences its social economy. All evaporates in spe- 
culation. Books, and theories, atid principles are published and 
read, and there the matter rests. A new set of books, theories, 
and principles are published, and overwhelm the first, but all this 
never goes beyond the world of idea in which half their existence 
is passed. Improvement, reform, movement of any kind in social 
business or real life, either for the better or the worse, stand still, 
because real life is but half their existence. Leave them the 
other half, their ideal world, to expatiate in — and that cannot be 
circumscribed by any kind of government — and they quietly put 
up with restrictions and burdens in real life which in our social 



256 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

economy would not be endured. Energy of mind and vigour of 
action in the real affairs of ordinary life are diluted and weakened 
by this life of dreamy spec^ulation. We sometimes see individuals 
among ourselves, novel-reading, romantic youths, forming a little 
world for themselves from the shelves of the circulating library, 
and dreaming away life in it. The literature, scholarship, and 
wide diffusion of the culture of the imaginative faculty in Ger- 
many, are in this view actually detrimental to the social develop- 
ment of the German people, to their industry, material interests, 
and activity in ordinary affairs of a mechanical kind, and to their 
energy and interestin claiming and exercising civil liberty or free- 
agency in real life. 

This double existence of the Germans accounts for some pecu- 
liarities in German literature. German authors, both the philo- 
sophic and the poetic, address themselves to a public far more 
intellectual, and more highly cultivated than our reading public. 
They address themselves, in fact, in their philosophical works, 
like the ancient Greek philosophers, to schools or bodies of dis- 
ciples, who must have attained a peculiar and considerable culti- 
vation of mind to understand them. The philosophy of Kant 
occupied Schiller, v/e are told in his biography, for three years of 
intense and exclusive study. In our literature, the most obscure 
and abstruse of metaphysical or philosophical writers take the 
public mind in a far lower state, simply cognizant of the meaning 
of language, and possessed of the ordinary reasoning powers. 
Locke, Dugald Stewart, Reid, Smith, Hume, require nothing 
more. Shakspeare, Scott, Byron require nothing more. German 
literature, even of the imaginative class, requires a highly culti- 
vated imaginative faculty from the readers.- Goethe's Faust, his 
Wilhelm Meister, many of Schiller's tragedies, all of Jean Paul 
Richter's productions, require readers trained, like the readers of 
Kant or Fichte, in a certain school, and to a certain considerable 
intellectual culture. Their philosophers and poets do not, hke 
ours, address themselves to the meanest capacity. The social 
influence of German literature is, consequently, confined within 
a narrower circle. It has no influence on the miiid of the lower, 
or even of the middle classes in active life, who have not the op- 
portunity or leisure to screw their faculties up to Ihe pitch-note of 
their great writers. The reading public must devote much time 
to acquire the knowledge, tone of feeling, and of imagination 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 257 

necessary to follow the writing public. The social economist 
finds accordingly in Germany'the most extraordinary dullness, 
inertness of mind, and ignorance, below a certain level, with the 
most extraordinary intellectual development, learning, and genius 
at or above it — the most extraordinary intellectual contrast be- 
tween the professional reading classes and the lower or even 
middle non-reading classes engaged in the ordinary affairs of life. 

Another peculiarity in German literature arising from the social 
economy of the country is, that the class of literary composition 
to which the works of Shakspeare, Cervantes, Scott, Le Sage, 
Fielding, Goldsmith, belong as pictures of natural action and 
character, is poorly filled up. Situation and plot, not deUneations 
of characters and incidents " true to nature," are the points on 
which the highest efforts of dramatic and poetic genius in German 
literature are the most happy. It is in the ideal world that the 
German mind is developed. The action of man upon man, the 
development of character and individual peculiarity by free social 
movement, are so restricted and tied down to uniformity by the 
social economy of Germany, that the author in this class of com- 
position finds no type of reality around him for the imagination 
to work upon. It would be difficult to point out any character, 
speech or passage from the German drama that has become 
popular literature— understood, felt, brought home to himself by 
the common man in Germany, in the same way that characters, 
expressions, verses, sentiments from Shakspeare, Burns, De Foe, 
Scott, are familiar to all of the slightest education in the same 
classes in Scotland or England. German literature is perhaps of 
a far higher cast, but it is not so widely diflused through the mass 
of the social body as our literature, although the class of people 
addicting themselves to it as a means of living are more nume- 
rous than the literary class in Britain ; and German literature is 
certainly less influential than ours on the public mind and social 
economy. 

The theatre in Germany, and in all countries which have no 
civil liberty, no freedom of action independent of government, 
and no free discussion of public affairs, occupies an important 
position in its social economy, is reckoned a great educational and 
social influence, a power not to be entrusted out of the hands of 
the state. The fictitious incidents of the drama supersede the 
real incidents and interests of life. In reading: of the organization 



258 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

of the Prussian government, the simple English reader stares at 
finding among the ministers of state for home affairs, for military- 
affairs, for ecclesiastical affairs, a minister of state for theatrical 
affairs. He can understand that from considerations of police, 
the theatre may be, as with us, under a censorship, and its super- 
intendence attached to some office about the court; but that 
theatres are of such importance as to be held a subject for distinct 
administration, and one on which considerable suras of the public 
revenues are regularly expended, appears extraordinary to one 
coming from our social state, in which dramatic representation is 
of no social influence whatsoever — in which it is held to be of no 
moral or educational value — in which theatrical performers of 
high talent cannot get bread in cities as populous and wealthy as 
Berlin. The social economist hastens to visit the German theatres, 
to satisfy himself that there is no mistake about this supposed 
social influence of the stage — to see the working of this court- 
machine for education on the public mind — to see the number 
and quality of the usual kind of audiences, as much as to see the 
play. 

Germany is reckoned to have 65 theatres, employing about 
2,147 actors and actresses, about 1,229 singers, male and female, 
about 448 dancers, and about 1,273 fiddlers and other musicians. 
About 5,000 people in all are on the theatrical establishments of 
Germany as the personale, without including tradesmen or others 
not on the boards. The Hof-theaier, or court theatre, is a neces- 
sary appendage to every little residence or capital ; and it is un- 
derstood that the deficit in the expense of a well-appointed theatre 
in a small population is made up by the state. In Berlin, even 
with a great and pleasure-seeking population, it is said the theatres 
cost the country about 15,000/. a year, besides the receipts. At 
Berlin there are three theatres in constant work, Sunday evenings 
notexcepted,and an Italian and a French troupe are also in activity 
part of the year. The houses are of moderate size, elegant, and 
in scenery, dresses, and especially in the orchestral department, 
very perfect. The prices of admission are extremely low. In 
Berlin, for instance, you pay 15 groshen at the German theatre, 
or 20 at the Italian opera, viz., 1*. 6d. or 2^, for a seat in the par- 
quet, or front division of the pit of our theatres, with the advan- 
tage that each sitting is numbered, and the seat folded back, and 
your ticket bears the number of your seat, so that be the house 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 259 

ever so fall, you get to it without squeezing or crowding :— great 
inducements these to go to the play. The time and patience of 
the public, also, as well as their money, are respected by these 
state players. Owing, no doubt, to their superior discipline, a 
long five act tragedy — such, for instance, as Schiller's Marie Sleio- 
art or Cabale und Z/eZ>e,— which with us would keep the audi- 
ence gaping till half-past eleven, or perhaps till midnight, is per- 
formed between six and half-past nine. The play-bill tells when 
the performance ends, as well as when it begins, and even when 
three pieces are given, half-past nine is the latest hour. These 
are imquestionably great inducements to a good theatrical attend- 
ance of the public. But governments cannot force the intellectual 
movement of a people. They may establish schools, theatres, 
and churches as educational means, but the using these means 
must be the impulse of the people themselves. You look in vain 
for the public in a German theatre. The public is more scarce 
in it than in our own. You see the travelling strangers, and the 
young people of the middle class, such as clerks, tradesmen, or 
students, when any celebrated actor or play appears ; and on 
opera nights the upper classes: but the people, the real people, 
the German equivalent, if there be any, to John Bull, you never 
see. If this lower class ever come to the theatres at all, they sit 
as quiet as mice in the little hole allotted them. A German theatre 
is a true picture of the Social state of Germany — princes and 
functionaries occupying the front boxes — the educated and mid- 
dle classes looking up to them from the pit below, in breathless 
awe and admiration, and the people out of sight and hearing of 
these two masses of the audience. As a social influence acting 
on the public mind, the German stage is of as little real importance 
as our own. It has to rear for itself the kind of public to whom 
it is of any importance. A theatrical corps and expenditure no 
doubt does raise a public for itself in the towns, and to them the 
theatre becomes important, perhaps a great deal too important, 
and too influential in educating the mind of that class to a sort of 
dreamy, imaginative, inactive life, to an undue value for appear- 
ance, show, and dress, and to an inaptness to encounter the rough 
realities of their social position. The social influence of the drama 
is in this class — and this is the only class it efl'ectually works upon 
— a positive evil, not a good. 

What are the social institutions which educate a people, which 



260 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

form their moral, intellectual, and national character ? In this 
land of schools and theatres, here where every individual is drilled 
into reading, writing, and the catechism, and the church, the play- 
house, and the press, are all under the special management of the 
governments as influential means for the improvement of the 
people, in what state is the mind of the people in Germany 
morally and intellectually? 

To come to any satisfactory conclusion on these questions, we 
must define what is meant by the people. The continental man 
generally means by the people the lower ranks of the middle 
class — the artisans, journeymen, servants, and tradesmen about 
towns, living more or less by educated labour, and having some 
degree of taste, leisure, and refinement. We mean by the people 
the labouring class of a nation, living principally by agricultural 
work, and in every country constituting the mass of the popula- 
tion. We milst compare this lower class in Germany Avith the 
same class among ourselves, and endeavour to find out the differ- 
ence, and the causes of the difference, in the physical and intel- 
lectual condition in each country of this lowest class of all in the 
community. 

It is a peculiar feature in the social condition of our lowest 
labouring class in Scotland, that none, perhaps, in Europe of the 
same class have so few physical, and so many intellectual wants 
and gratifications. Luxury or even comfort in diet, or lodging, 
is unknown. Oatmeal, milk, potatoes, kail, herrings, and rarely 
salt meat, are the chief food; a wretched, dark, damp, mud-floored 
hovel, the usual kind of dwelling ; dirt, disorder, sluttishness, and 
not too much good temper at the fireside, the ordinary habits of 
living; yet with these wants and discomforts in their physical 
condition, which is far below that of the same class abroad, we 
never miss a book, perhaps a periodical, a sitting in the kirk, a 
good suit of clothes for Sunday wear, and an argument every day 
amounting to controversy, almost to quarrel, with some equally 
argumentacious neighbour upon subjects far above the reach of 
mind of the common man in other countries, and often carried 
on with an acuteness, intelligence, and play of mental power, 
especially in the discussion of abstract philosophical or religious 
subjects, which the educated classes in other countries scarcely 
attain, and which are strangely in contrast with the wants in 
their physical condition. The labouring man's subscriptions in 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 261 

Scotland to his book-club, his newspaper turn, his Bible society, 
his missionary society, his kirk and minister if he be a seceder, 
and his neighbourly aid of the distressed, are expenditure upon 
intellectual and moral gratifications of a higher cast than music- 
scraping, singing, dancing, play-going, novel-reading, or other 
diversions of a much higher class of people in Germany. Tiie 
Scotch labouring man gives yearly considerable contributions to 
spread civilization and Christianity among people much better off, 
far more daintily fed, lodged, and clothed, in more physical com- 
fort, and much farther removed from the wants and hardships of 
an uncivilized condition, than he is iiimself. This may be foolish, ' 
but it is noble and ennobling in the character of the lowest class 
of a people. The half-yearly shilling given in all sincerity of 
purpose by the cottar-tenant of a turf-built hovel on a barren 
Scotch muir-land, to aid the missions for converting the South 
Sea Islanders or the Hindoos, is the noblest-paid money, as far 
as regards the giver, in the queen's dominions. There is also in 
the mind of the common man of Scotland an imaginative thread 
interwoven somehow, and often very queerly, with his hard, dry, 
precise way of thinking and acting in ordinary affairs, which 
makes the whole labouring class in Scotland of higher intellectu- 
ality than the same class in other countries. We often hear, what 
country but Scotland ever produced a Burns among her peasantry? 
But the real question of the social economist is, what country but 
Scotland ever produced a peasantry for whom a Burns could 
write .'' Burns had a public of his own in his own station in life 
who could feel and appreciate his poetry, long before he was 
known to the upper class of Scotch people, and in fact he was 
never known or appreciated by the upper class. In other coun- 
tries it is the poetry of the higher educated class that works down 
to the people ; as the poetry of Ariosto or Tasso, among the Ital- 
ians; of the Niebelung, of the Saga, of the lays of the Trouba- 
dours, among the German, Scandinavian, and French people ; or 
as ballads of Burger, Goethe, and Schiller are said to be now 
working downwards in Germany, and becoming folks-lieder — 
the songs and poetry of the people. But where have been 
poets belonging to the labouring class called into song by their 
own class? This is more extraordinary than the genius of the 
individual himself, this genius of the class for whom he com- 
posed. Is there any spark of this intellectual spirit among the 



262 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

common labouring people in_the finer soils and climates of Eu- 
rope ? or does the little exertion of mind with which all physical 
wants may be supplied, and many physical enjoyments obtained 
in abundance, tend to form a heavy, material, unintellectual cha- 
racter among the labouring class in Germany, which is confirmed 
by the state of pupilage and non-exertion of mind in which they 
are educated and kept by their governments; while the mind of 
the Scotch labouring man is stirred up and in perpetual exercise 
by the self-dependence, exertion, privation, forethought, moral 
restraint, and consideration required in his social position, in which 
• neither climate nor poor-rate, neither natural nor artificial facili- 
ties of living without thinking, allow him to sink into apathy or 
mental indolence ? 

But there are other educational influences, of far more import- 
ant action in forming the intellectual character of a people than 
schools or theatres, which the German people want, and the 
British possess. The social economist, who reflects upon our 
crowded open courts of law in the ordinary course of their busi- 
ness at Westminister Hall, or at the Court of Session, at the as- 
sizes or circuits or sherifl'-courts, in short, wherever any kind of 
judicial business is going on, and upon the eagerness and atten- 
tion with which the common people follow out the proceedings 
even in cases of no public interest, will consider the bar, with its 
public oral pleadings, examinations of witnesses, and reasonings 
on events, a most important instrument in our national education. 
Whoever attends to the ordinary run of conversation among our 
middle and lower classes will think it no exaggeration to say, that 
the bar is more influential perhaps than the pulpit, in forming the 
public mind, and in educating and exercising the mental powers 
of the people. It is a perpetual exercise in applying principle to 
actions, and actions to principle. This unceasing course of moral 
and intellectual education, enjoyed by our very lowest class in 
every locality, is wanting in Germany in general, owing to the 
different mode of judicial procedure in closed courts, by written 
pleadings or private hearings of argument, and private examina- 
tions of facts and witnesses. Law and justice are, perhaps, as 
well administered in the one way as in the other; but the effects 
on the public mind, on the moral training of the character, and 
on the intellectuality and judgment of the common people, are 
very different. All schools for the people, all S3^stems of national 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 263 

education sink into insignificance, compared to the working of 
this vast open school for the public mind. We see its influence in 
the public press. Law cases are found to be the most interesting 
as well as the most instructive reading for the people, and our 
newspapers fill their columns with them. This taste has arisen 
also in France, since France has enjoyed open courts of law ; 
and it is one of the most striking proofs of the social progress of 
the French people, that their theatres are deserted, and their 
courts of law crowded, and that their popular newspapers now 
report all interesting civil or criminal law cases. 

Another great educational influence wanting in Germany, is 
the moving moral diorama of human affairs and interests pre- 
sented to the public mind by our newspaper press. This litera- 
ture of the common people is unknown in Germany. Foreign 
newspapers do not furnish food for the mind of the common man. 
The newspaper public abroad is of a higher, more intellectual, 
more educated cast, than ours ; but therefore more circumscribed 
— a public of professional men, functionaries, scholars, men of 
acquirements far above those of the mass of the people. It is to 
them, not to the people, that the press, both the literary and the 
periodical, and the pulpit also, in Germany, address themselves, 
by far too exclusively ; and the mass of the people, the labourers 
and peasantry, are lost sight of If we come down in German 
literature to what is intelligible to this lowest class, we find a 
great vacuity not filled up by those daily or weekly accounts of 
the real affairs and local business passing around them, which our 
country newspapers furnish to the, mind of the common man, and 
which exercise and educate his intellectual and moral powers. 

The strictness — pharisaical strictness it may be — with which the 
repose of Sunday is observed in England, and particularly in 
Scotland — the complete abstinence not merely from work, but 
from amusement, is unquestionably a powerful educational influ- 
ence in our social economy. Its religious value'^is not here con- 
sidered. It may possibly produce as much hypocrisy as piety. 
But viewing it simply in its influence on the intellectual culture 
of a people, and comparing its effects with the intellectual culture 
produced by the round of amusement to which Siuiday is devoted 
on the Continent, the social economist will not hesitate to say that 
our strict observance, where it is the voluntary action of the public 
mind, and not an observance enforced bv kirk sessions and town 



264 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

baillies, is of a higher educational tendency, and both indicates 
and produces a more intellectual character. The common man 
is thrown by it upon his own mental resources, reflections, and 
ideas, be they religious or not. He is not a mere recipient of 
fatigue for six days, and of amusement for one, without thought 
or mental exertion in the one state more than in the other — 
which is the Continental man's existence ; but for one day he 
is in repose, and, without taking religion at all into consideration, 
is in a state of leisure in which he is thrown back upon reflection, 
judgment, memory of what he knows or has heard, and upon 
considering and reasoning upon his own affairs, whether spiritual 
or temporal. It is a valuable pause from manual labour, which, 
if filled up by mere amusement, is lost as to intellectual culture. 

The want of religious dissent, and consequently of religious 
discussion among the people, is also the want of a powerful 
means of educating, and sharpening by controversy, the intel- 
lectual faculties of the lower orders of Germany. 

The want also of public or common business, small or great, 
to discuss, or influence by their opinions or votes, and in which 
they can act freely, and according to their own will and judg- 
ment, without superintendence and control, tells fearfully against 
the development of the human intellect in this lower class in 
Germany. It is the same cause, only in less intensity of force — 
viz., the want of exercise and excitement -of the mental powers 
— which reduces to idiotcy or imbecility the inmate of the silent 
penitentiary. Here in Germany, the government, and the whole 
social economy of the country, remove systematically all exercise 
of mental powers from the people, and reduce the common work- 
ing German peasantry, the lowest but greatest class in the com- 
munity, to a lower state or intellectuality than we are acquainted 
with in Great Britain ; where, even in the most remote and soli- 
tary situations, there is, owing to the nature of our social economy 
and institutions, a perpetual stream of exciting and educating 
influences and circumstances acting on the mind of the common 
man. Here, this lowest class of the population are, intellectually, 
but big children who know their letters. They are in a state of 
extreme inertness of mind. Take one of our uneducated people 
who can neither write nor read, converse with him, try his good 
sense, his judgment, his powers of comprehending, deciding, and 
acting within his sphere, and we find that the education of reali- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 265 

ties in our free social state, through which this ignorant man's 
mind has passed in the various exciting circumstances which in 
our social condition daily exercise the faculties of every man in 
every station, has actually brought him to a higher intellectual 
and moral state — has made him a more thinking, energetic, right- 
acting character, than the passive human beings of the same class 
in Germany, who have had the education of the schools, but 
without the practical exercise of the mental powers afterwards 
in their social relations. 

The blessings of shool education let no man undervalue; but in 
our zeal for the education of the people let us not take the show 
for the substance, and imagine their education to consist in reading 
and writing, and not in the exercise and enjoyment of their own 
mental powers as free agents, acting in their own civil, political, 
moral, and religious duties as men and members of society. Na- 
tional schools,and theatres, and all that can be taught or represented 
by governments on the German system, are but poor substitutes 
for that education through the real business of life which can only 
be given to a people by free social institutions. 



18 



CHAPTER XII. 

NOTES ON THE CORN LAW QUESTION— ABROAD AND AT HOME. 

The landed interest and the moneyed, the gentry and the capi- 
taUsts, have been tilting with each other for twenty years in our 
literary and parliamentary arena, about the corn law question, for- 
getting altogether a third interest in the field, the mother of them 
both, with a vastly more important stake in the issue — the labour- 
ing interest. How will this greatest of all interests be affected by 
the abolition of all import duty on corn. 

It is taken for granted by the moneyed interest, and faintly de- 
nied by the landed, that the condition of the working class will 
be improved, or at least not deteriorated, by the reduction of the 
price of bread to the same rate as the Continental price. But this 
position is by no means satisfactorily investigated, much less 
proved. A reduction of the wages of labour is generally admitted 
to be a necessary consequence of a permanent reduction of the 
cost of the main article of the subsistence of the labouring class. 
That is, indeed, the main object avowed by all the political econo- 
mists who advocate the abolition of duties on corn. Their avowed 
object is to enable our manufacturers to compete in the cost of 
production with the foreign manufacturers in the foreign market. 
Their main argument is, that the consequent reduction in the cost 
of production, that is, in the wages of labour, will set capital free , 
for new and more extensive employment of labour — will in effect 
throw one-third or one-half more capital into the labour market, 
if the reduced price of bread to the labourer works out a propor- 
tional reduction, to the extentof one-half or one-third, in the price 
of his labour : and the labourer, it is contended, will not be worse 
off with, we shall suppose, six shillings per week of wages, and the 
quartern loaf at four-pence, than with twelve shillings a week, and 
the quartern loaf at eight-pence — and will in fact be better off, by 
the difference of one-half of the capital now employed in paying 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 267 

his wages, or rather the tax upon his bread, being set free for pro- 
duction and new and extended employment for labour. This is 
the present state of the argument, and of the parties, in this great 
social question. Let us examine this argument. 

The ordinary average price of bread, potatoes, or whatever may 
be the ordinary food of the labourer, regulates, it is generally 
admitted, the ordinary average rate of his wages ; although the 
demand for labour and its supply in the labour market may for a 
short time raise it above, or sink it below, the ordiiiary average 
rate ; the tendency always is for the supply, as in other markets, 
to come up to the demand, and reduce the value of labour to the 
ordinary rate fixed by the cost of subsistence. Now in what way- 
will the labouring interest be benefited by having the ordinary 
average value of their property — for their labour is their property, 
and the only property of this interest, as land or capital is the 
property of the other two interests — permanently reduced ? It is 
no advantage to them to create more property of the same kind 
as their own, that is to say, more labour, to come into the labour 
market in competition with their property. It is an advantage 
clearly enough to the master-manufacturers who have to buy their 
property, that is, their labour : but how is it an advantage to them 
who have to sell it? New and extended employment, new capital 
set free, to the extent of one-half or one-third, or whatever it may 
be, for the employment of more labour, can only have the perma- 
nent effect of producing one-half or one-third more labourers, and 
joining them to a body already overcharged with numbers — of 
creating more of an article with which the market is already over- 
stocked, by way of raising its value. This seems not very sound 
reasoning in political economy on the part of those who advocate 
the abolition. The temporary effect can only last for a few weeks, 
or months, or years ; and then the new demand is met by an 
equivalent supply in the labour market, and the whole labouring 
interest suffers a deterioration in the value of their property. 
But, it is argued, this deterioration is apparent only — is only in 
the money value of labour, not in its value compared to the cost 
of subsistence; and if that fall in proportion, if six shillings a week 
will command as many quartern loaves then as twelve shillings u 
week will do now, this deterioration is no loss to the labouring 
class; but, on the contrary, by enriching rtnd multiplying their 
employers, is indirectly a gain to them. There is a flaw in this 



268 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

argument. Although the cost of bread, the main article of the 
labourer's subsistence, regulates in the long run the ordinary 
average rate of his wages, man in any state of well-being does 
not subsist upon bread alone. Now when his wages are regulated 
by an ordinary average price of eight-pence or a shilhng for a 
quartern loaf, if he spares two loaves a week in his family consumpt 
of bread, he has his sixteen-pence or two shillings to expend in 
meat, milk, tea, sugar, spirits, or whatever he chooses to make the 
equivalent in his diet for the two loaves ; but if his wages be 
regulated by an ordinary average price of four-pence for the quar- 
tern loaf, his saving of two loaves, his eight-pence, will buy no 
equivalent; for meat will not necessarily fall in proportion to the 
price of bread, nor milk, cheese, butter — still less will house rent, 
fuel, or the taxed commodities, beer, coffee, tea, sugar, tobacco. 
The condition of the labouring man will evidently be deteriorated 
by lowering the money value of his labour, unless one and all of 
the objects he habitually consumes be also lowered in proportion 
and not the one alone upon which his rate of wages more or less 
depends. It wants the appearance at least of a disinterested spirit 
of legislation on the part of the moneyed interest, to demand the 
abolition of all duties upon that one article which is usually con- 
sidered to regulate the wages of the labouring interest, leaving all 
the other articles which enter into the consumpt of that interest, 
and constitute its comforts and well-being, more outof their reach 
by the consequences of this abolition than they were before. To 
be consistent, and above all suspicion of seeking a benefit only for 
one class at the expense of another, the advocates of the abolition 
of the duties on corn should propose the reduction at the same 
time of all the taxes which affect the labouring man in his lodging, 
housekeeping, diet, and civilized tastes and gratifications ; such 
as the timber duties, glass duties, malt duties, duties on coffee, 
tea, sugar, tobacco, paper, and a thousand others ; as well as on 
that one article of which the permanent cheapness will lessen his 
wages, and consequently his means to purchase and enjoy the 
others. If it be argued, as some political economists do, that corn 
permanently cheap will not necessarily lower the price of labour, 
then is the abolition of the corn laws shorn of the main argument 
on which it is urged; viz., that by diminishing the price of labour 
our master-manufacturers will be able to compete in the foreign 
market with the cheap production of the countries which have no 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 269 

duties on corn. These political economists tell us it is the amount 
of labour in the labour market, and the greater or smaller demand 
for it in proportion to the supply, that regulate the value or wages 
of labour, and not the price of corn. But it is the low or high 
price of this primary article of food that in the present con- 
dition of the labouring class regulates the facility or difficulty 
of marriage among this greatest mass of society ; and a perma- 
nently low price of corn produces naturally and necessarily that 
superabundance of labour which reduces its value in the labour 
market. It is only shifting the load from one shoulder to the 
other to say that it is the abundance of labour in the labour 
market that produces a low rate of wages, and not the abun- 
dance of corn. The abundance of corn produces by natural 
operation abundance of labour, and the abundance of labour 
produces a cheap rate of it. The causes are the same, not distinct. 
It is cheap corn operating on the labour market, at one remove 
from its effect. The question remains as before — is the low rate 
or value of labour naturally produced— whether directly and im- 
mediately, or indirectly and gradually, is not of importance here 
— by the low rate of corn, of any real advantage to the already 
existing labouring interest, whose whole property is their labour? 
It is compatible with the well-being and physical comfort of this 
great majority of society, without a proportional reduction to the 
reduction of his wages, of the price of all that the labouring man 
habitually consumes, as well as of his bread alone ? If the three 
interests, the landed, the moneyed, and the labouring, were all 
starting into existence under a social economy or system of go- 
vernment which had a clean sheet of paper before it, the abolition 
of a tax so absurd as that on corn, or on any article necessary to 
a civilized existence, could not meet with a doubt; but to reduce 
a portion only of the artificial system which blots the sheet, and 
that only in favour of one interest, leaving the other two more 
heavily burdened, in consequence, with the evils, real or imagi- 
nary, of all the rest of tlic artificial system, would not, in itself, and 
apart from all other considerations, be equitable or wise legislation. 
It is very possible that such a proportional reduction of all duties 
and taxes on the objects which enter into the use and consumpt 
of the labouring interest could not be eflfected without a national 
bankruptcy, or a stringent tax on property ; but it is not on that 
account the more just to make the labouring interest the scape-goat 
for the other two, and to reduce their means of civilized living. 



270 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

The moneyed interest would clearly be a gainer by a reduced 
value of labour. The landed interest would perhaps not on the 
whole suffer so much as the landlords apprehend. It would be a 
change in the manner of obtaining their quota of the produce of 
their land, rather than in the amount. But the labouring interest 
would clearly be a loser, as all the comforts and enjoyments of 
life, bread alone excepted, would be more out of their reach than 
at present. Of bread they would earn no more quartern loaves 
by a week's work than now, although the loaf would only be half 
of its present value, and would only exchange for half of Avhat it 
now does of the other necessaries or comforts of life for which the 
labourer has to exchange its value. It would, in reality, be an 
adulteration of the coin in which labour is valued and paid. 

In a question so important, delusion should be carefully re- 
moved. It is delusion to believe with Mr. Jacob, Dr. Bowring, 
and other great statistical authorities — however consolatory and 
comforting the belief may be to the country squires and lairds on 
the parliamentary committees on the corn laws — that wheat can- 
not be shipped at Dantzick under 45^., or 35s., or any other price. 
The delusion arises from applying ideas drawn from our English 
state of society and agriculture to a social and agricultural econo- 
my altogether different. It is only in Britain, and a few densely 
inhabited manufacturing districts on the Continent, that tenants of 
capital paying money-rents can be said to exist. They are the 
exception, not the rule, among the husbandry class of Europe. 
They can only exist where there is a co-existent class of con- 
sumers within reach for every kind of agricultural produce ; where 
there is no capital to buy, it is but forced and unnatural work to 
produce; and where only one kind of agricultural produce— corn 
— can find a market, and all the succession crops, owing to the 
small demand in proportion to the supply of meat, butter, cheese, 
and such secondary farm produce, give no remunerating prices, 
regular farming on our system cannot exist. Where winter also 
interrupts all out-door farm work, not as with us, only for a few 
days occasionally, and rarely for several weeks, but for many 
successive months of frost and snow, all farming speculations on 
the great scale, with hired servants on wages, and improved sys- 
tems of husbandry, are delusive, and are only successful in a very 
few localities. Farming on the Continent cannot generally be 
carried on upon the Scotch or English system, in which man and 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 271 

horse every day of the year are reprodactively employed in farm 
work. The Metayer system is the only mode of letting land that 
is practicable, generally speaking, in the corn-growing countries 
which supply the British markets. In this Metayer system the 
landlord provides the land, houses, utensils, and seed ; the tenant 
finds the labour ; and the crops are divided between the two 
parties, after deducting the seed, horse-corn, and bread until the 
next crop, in proportions according to their respective furnishings 
towards the production, or according to usage or agreement. 
From not considering, this agricultural arrangement, which is 
almost universal on the Continent, Mr. Jacob and other writers on 
the corn laws have fallen into the delusion that wheat and other 
grain cannot be shipped from the Continent permanently, or for 
a series of years, under certain prices, and have given themselves 
infinite trouble to collect the opinions of consuls and corn-dealers 
at the different shipping ports, on the minimum prices at which 
grain could be shipped in their localities. Now, it is quite true 
that in our British system of agriculture there is a minimum price 
— the cost of production — below which corn, like any other 
article of human manufacture, cannot permanently settle. The 
capital, time, and labour for its reproduction would soon be turned 
to something else, and the supply would soon right itself, and 
right the price, as in all other applications of capital to produc- 
tion. But in the Metayer system— and all the corn of Europe 
that is exported to us is produced under this system of husbandry 
— there is no minimum to the price of corn. The capital of 
reproduction is always present in the shape of corn, and, together 
with the labour and management, is provided fv)r out of the crop 
in the first place, and is in no way diminished or afl'ected by the 
price or quantity of the overplus sent to market. The seed, the 
husbandman's food, that of his cattle, labourers, and extra la- 
bourers, if any are employed in prospective operations, are taken 
off before any of the crop is brought into the shape of rent to 
the landlord, or profit to the tenant; and whether that surplus 
which goes for rent and farmer's profit sell for 45?., or 45d. per 
quarter, in no way affects the means of reproduction next sea- 
son. If this surplus never sell at all, but, as is said to be often 
the case, perishes year after year on the banks of the rivers, or in 
the granaries of Dantzick, from want of demand, the income of 
the noble, and the profit of his Metayer tenant are, no doiil)t, re- 



272 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

duced to the mere use they can make in their households of the 
products of the land ; but the capital of reproduction next sea- 
son remains the same as if their surplus had sold for 45s. per 
quarter, or any other price. This essential difference between 
the working of the Metayer system of husbandry and our British 
system, has been altogether overlooked by political economists. 
Some writers, who have observed the inferior husbandry of the 
Continent, have imagined that the opening of the British mar- 
kets to foreign grain would alter this Metayer system, and intro- 
duce a system of agriculture similar to that of England and 
Scotland. This, too, is a delusion. It is only one article of 
agricultural produce — corn — that England buys, or needs ; and 
returns for capital laid out in farming cannot be made out of one 
article alone of farm produce — not even in England. It is out 
of the whole succession of crops in the rotation, the grass crops 
and green crops as well as corn crops, that farming capital is 
replaced. An extraordinary demand for one article, as for 
wheat, can only have the effect of making the farmer scourge 
his land to produce that one article. Besides, agricultural im- 
provement consists mainly in the judicious economy of labour. 
But on the Continent there is no outlet for surplus labour, or for 
a superfluous agricultural population, in manufacturing districts 
or colonies. The land must support the people either as labour- 
ers or paupers ; so that large farms with few hands comparatively 
living upon the produce, are impracticable abroad, as a general 
arrangement of the agricultural land. The military system, 
adopted by all the continental powers since the peace, is also an 
impediment to such a free circulation of labour from place to 
place as such an improvement in the system of husbandry would 
require. 

It is a delusion, also, before touched upon, arising from the ap- 
plication of ideas drawn from our English social economy to the 
conthiental social economy, to argue, as many do, and from very 
correct principles in the abstract of political economy, that the 
more we take of foreign time and labour involved in their com- 
modity — corn — the more foreigners will take of our time and 
labour involved in our commodity— manufactured goods. On the 
Continent every family, even in towns not inconsiderable, manu- 
factures for itself — buys little or nothing compared to families of 
the same class in England. The Metayer family has its own raw 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 273 

material of clothing, viz., flax, hemp, wool, hides, raised by itself; 
has house-room and time — idle time in winter— to work them up, 
not indeed into very fine, but into very wearable stuff, by their 
own and their domestics' work; and no amount of capital thrown 
into their hands as the price of their corn could change those 
habits of a population which are almost produced by, or at least 
very closely connected with, their climate, husbandry, mode of 
existence, and whole social economy. The whole agricultural 
population, if not manufacturing in some way — spinning, weaving, 
making household goods, working in iron, wood, or cloth, for their 
own use, during the winter months — would be totally idle all the 
winter half year. It is a saving of time with us to buy all, and 
make nothing at home. It would be a waste of time on the Con- 
tinent not to make at home all that can be made. It has been 
pointed out alreaciy as the main impediment to the success of the 
German commercial league, that owing to this circumstance in the 
social economy of Germany the home market, on which alone 
any great industrial prosperity can be founded, is, and always 
will be, inconsiderable, and insufficient to keep alive any great 
development of manufacturing industry. 

The superior importance of the home market for all that the 
manufacturing industry of Great Britian produces, compared to 
what the foreign market, including even the colonial, takes off, 
furnishes one of the strongest arguments against the abolition 
of the corn laws. It is an argument drawn from the quiver of 
the moneyed interest itself. If the home market, which depends 
upon the consumpt of the many, be injured by a deficiency of the 
means among the many to buy and consume, and a reduction of 
the wages of labour by a reduction of the cost of subsistence is 
clearly a reduction of the means to expend in the home market, 
it is killing the goose that laid the golden eggs to reduce the wages 
of labour for the sake of the foreign market for our manufactures. 
Political economists tell us that the export of our industrial pro- 
ducts, including even the consumpt of our colonies, is by no means 
of that magnitude that any real interests of our labouring class 
should be sacrificed for the foreign market ; and that it is not the 
basis of our manufacturing prosperity. The home consumpt, not 
the foreign, is undeniably that which the great mass of British 
manufacturing labour and capital is engaged in supplying. Take 
away from the home consumers the means to consume — that is. 



274 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

the high and artificial value of their labour, or rate of wages, 
produced by the working of the corn laws— and you stop this 
home market. You cut off the spring from which it is fed. You 
sacrifice a certain home market for an uncertain foreign market. 
You sacrifice four-fifths for the chance of augmenting one-fifth. 
If the one-fifth, the foreign consumpt, could be augmented so as 
to equal the four-fifths, the home consumpt, it would still be a 
question of very doubtful policy whether it should be so aug- 
mented ; whether the means of living of so large a proportion of 
the productive classes should be made to depend so entirely upon 
a demand which political circumstances might suddenly cut ofi". 
It is computed or guessed at, by political economists, that one and 
a half million of familes, or 8,200,000 individmils, of whom one- 
half may be taken as grown men, are employed in all the depart- 
ments of industry that can strictly be called manufacturing ; and 
that of these one-eleventh part only is employed for the foreign 
consumer. It is the peculiar advantage and security of our manu- 
facturing industry and prosperity that it does not altogether de- 
pend upon the foreign market ; yet the vicissitudes in the condition 
of those employed in supplying the home market are sufficiendy 
frequent and grievous. But if, instead of 800,000 or a million of 
persons employed in manufacturing for the foreign market, we 
had eight millions depending upon a demand which every petty 
political misunderstanding among the European powers might 
obstruct, would this be, morally or politically, an advantageous 
position ? Would it be wise policy to call into existence a labour- 
ing population equal to that now supported by the consumpt of 
their labour in the home market, to be depending entirely upon 
the still more precarious foreign market ? 

But, say the advocates for the abolition of the corn laws, it is a 
question of necessity in British legislation, not of choice. If our 
manufacturing capitalists cannot get cheap labour at home to 
enable them to compete in the foreign market with the foreign 
manufacturer, they will remove to foreign countries with their 
capital, skill and machinery, and will in reality take our home 
market with them ; for it is from their ever-circulating capital dif- 
fused through all the social mass, that the means of consumpt in 
our home market are derived. With all respect for the many 
eminent political economists who adopt this argument, it appears 
very similar to that kind of political wisdom which, with more 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 275 

justice than politeness, is caWed—fuc/ffe. Is cheap labour the only- 
element in cheap production? Arc not clieap and quick com- 
munications by land and water, fire-power and water-power, 
ready markets, banking facilities, a vast moneyed body of buyers 
between the producers and the consumers, quick, diligent habits 
of work, and an active spirit among the people, a steady consti 
tutional government, perfect freedom of trade and industry, an 
impossibility of being disturbed by wars, or military duties, or 
government interference in the applications of capital and indus- 
try, as necessary as cheap labour for the beneficial employment of 
manufacturing capital? Machinery, skill, and capital may no 
doubt be removed, but not the natural and acquired advantages 
of Great Britain, without which these are helpless and useless. 
A few individuals with capital, skill, and government patronage, 
may, no doubt, make or mar their fortunes on the Continent — as 
for instance the late Mr. Cockeril's house in Belgium — by estab- 
lishing iron works, cotton works, or other manufactories ; but the 
basis of all real manufacturing business, quick, sure, uninterrupted, 
extensive home consumpt, free circulation, free trade, free industry, 
buyers to take off every imaginable product of human industry, 
and for a moderate profit to take upon themselves the chance and 
delay of finding the ultimate consumers, are all wanting on the 
Continent. The people are not consumers. Would any sane 
man transfer his capital from a country with coal fields on the sea- 
coast, harbours, home markets, banks, and with no natural impedi- 
ments to industry from the climate either winter or summer, and 
no artificial impediments from wars or military organization, to 
establish it in the machinery, buildings, and fixtures, necessary 
for his manufacture, in countries which have never until now seen 
twenty years together since the days of the Romans without the 
visitations and ravages of war in the land, and in which every 
summer the whole working population, even the hands most 
necessary in his factory, may be called out to be drilled for weeks 
together at the whim of the prince ? The people on the Continent 
are not consumers, nor are they producers. They have not, as 
work-people, the productiveness of English work-people. The 
cheapness of their labour is only in appearance. Compared to 
what it produces, it is in reality dear. The acquired knack, dex- 
terity, and skill in the operative, arc wanting; and owing to the 
interruptions from his military service in his regular breeding up 



276. NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

to his handicraft, the continental operator must always be at best 
a half-bred workman, producing generally inferior work, and al- 
ways work which costs much of his time. There is wanting also, 
from the slow and uncertain markets, and the habits of a people 
more inactive and sedentary than the British, the alert, prompt, 
quick, national habit of working to each other, of laying every- 
thing for example to the operator's hand that he requires, with the 
same activity, punctuality, and spirit with which he himself works. 
Whoever looks into the social economy of an English or Scotch 
manufacturing district in which the population has become tho- 
roughly imbued with the spirit of productiveness, will observe that 
it is not merely the expertness, dispatch, and skill of the operative 
himself, that are concerned in the prodigious amount of his pro- 
duction in a given time, but the labourer w'ho wheels coals to his 
fire, the girl who makes ready his breakfast, the whole population; 
in short, from the pot-boy who brings his beer, to the banker who 
keeps his employer's cash, are inspired with the same alert spirit — 
are in fact working to his hand with the same quickness and punc- 
tuality that he works with himself. English workmen taken to 
the Continent always complain that they cannot get on with their 
work as at home, because of the slow, unpunctual, pipe-in-mouth 
working habits of those who have to work to their hands; and on 
whom their own activity and productiveness mainly depend. The 
low demand for quantity or quaUty of goods produces this low 
activity or productiveness, and this depends upon natural circum- 
stances affecting the social economy of the continental people — 
circumstances connected with climate, soil, fuel, extent of country, 
communications, food, and way of living, which no economical 
laws can alter. 

It is certainly not any demonstrated improvement in the condi- 
tion of our labouring class by the increase of their numbers, and 
reduction of their wages necessarily following a reduced price of 
bread, nor is it the magnitude of the amount of employment given 
by the foreign consumer to our manufacturing industry and capital, 
nor is it any reasonable fear of the removal to foreign countries 
of any important proportion of the manufacturing capital and in- 
dustry of Great Britain, that would lead an unprejudiced man to 
' join in the cry for the abolition of the corn laws. On any of these 
grounds— and no others are usually adduced by the abolitionists 
— it will be clearly a false step in Political Economy. But Politi- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 277 

cal Economy regards only the wealth of nations, not their social 
well-being, not the good condition, physically and morally, of the 
people. In social economy this step will produce in Great Britain 
a most beneficial revolution, radical, yet unfelt in its operation, 
because spread over a great number of years, as every great social 
change ought to be, and carrying with it ultimately such an im- 
provement, such a regeneration of well-being in the condition of the 
labouring classes both manufacturing and agricultural, that no un- 
prejudiced man who examines its tendency and ultimate effects on 
our social economy to the bottom, will hesitate to join in the cry 
for the abolition of these corn laws. The social economy of the 
country will be insensibly improved by this step, in the following 
way. 

The labour-market of the operative manufacturing population 
of Great Britain is subject to two distinct kinds of pressure arising 
from two distinct causes; but iif the reasonings of our political 
economists and legislators on the causes and remedies of pauper- 
ism, the two are always slumped together. The one pressure is 
natural, is caused by the natural tendency of population, in the 
manufacturing class, as in every other, to increase more rapidly 
than the means of subsistence; and education, self-restraint, and 
the tastes and habits of a more elevated standard of living are the 
only remedies applicable to this tendency. The other pressure is 
artificial, is caused by a defect in our social economy, by which a 
perpetual stream is running out of the channel of agricultural 
labour into the channels of maufacturing labour. The constant 
tendency of agricultural labour to rush into other branches of 
industry is very obvious among us, but a re-action we never see. 
The children of the labourers in husbandry become smiths, car- 
penters, weavers, or seek a living in the factory; but the children 
of these factory operatives never betake themselves permanently 
to husbandry work. The reality of this tendency is not merely 
proved by observation, or by conclusions drawn from the rapid 
increase of our towns, and of our manufactiu'ing production, and 
the deterioration of the condition of the operative manufacturing 
class ; but from the population returns. The relative proportions 
of those who live by agricultural labour, and by other labour, 
have altered so much from one census to another, that is, within 
ten years, that instead of two-thirds of the population being en- 
gaged in agricultural, and one-third in manufacturing or other 



278 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

labour, the proportion is now said to be almost reversed, and one- 
third only is engaged in agriculture, and two-thirds in manufac- 
tures. Without just pinning our faith to the accuracy of the 
returns on this head, we have enough to establish the fact in our 
social economy, that besides the natural increase of our manufac- 
turing class breeding hands within itself, there is a perpetual drain 
from agricultural labour into manufacturing labour. It is the 
object of all incorporations, crafts, apprenticeship-laws and regu- 
lations, and of all clubs, trades-unions, combinations, and associa- 
tions of operatives, whether within or without the shelter of the 
mantle of the law, to dam back and keep out this influx of labour 
into their labour market, which reduces the value of their labour 
below the means of a civilized subsistence. The husbandry 
labourers alone are not engaged in this struggle, because no man 
presses into their labour-market. If the manufacturing labourers 
could exclude the influx into their body from the agricultural body, 
their labour-market would never be so over supplied with labour 
that its value would fall short of the wages necessary to a civil- 
ized subsistence. This want of the means to hold a civilized 
subsistence from the earnings of skill and industry, is the plague- 
spot which taints the whole body of our labouring population, 
deteriorates their physical and moral condition, and breeds com- 
binations, discontent, disturbance, misery, destitution, and vice, 
even in the bosom of peace, and of a prosperous and improving 
condition of the higher classes. It is an artificial pressure from 
without, not the working of any natural law, that produces this 
wretched social system. What then is the cause of this artificial 
pressure on manufacturing labour? What is it in agricultural 
labour that makes all who can fly from it press into the labour- 
market of the manufacturing class ? The agricultural labourer 
must somehow be in a still worse condition, and still worse paid than ^ 
the operative in any other kind of labour. But why is he worse off 
or worse paid ? His fatigue is as great, his hours of toil as long, his 
skill and dexterity as important as in any ordinary kind of manu- 
facturing labour. The shoemaker, tailor, smith, weaver, or factory 
workman of any kind, has not a trade requiring more intelligence, 
forethought, and skill ; and is intrusted with no such costly instru- 
ments to work with, as the ploughman or carter working with a 
team worth often two or three hundred pounds sterling, or more 
with its tackle. In no branch of manufacture does the employer 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 279 

depend for successful production upon the intelligence, skill, and 
faithful work of any one single operative, so entirely as the farmer 
must upon his workmen, upon his ploughman, for instance, or 
his seedsman. Why is this labour of skill and trust so much 
underpaid comparatively, that there is a constant pressure from it 
upon all other branches of industry : and that badly off as other 
operatives may be, the agricultural operative is still worse off, and 
seeks employment in the manufacturing labour-market ? To solve 
this question is a most important problem in the present political 
and social economy of Great Britain. 

Whatever other elements enter into the wages of labour, one 
is indubitable. The employer pays wages, in tlie long run, only 
for the work that makes him a return. He pays no wages for 
that which does not repay him, cither in profit or pleasure. Now 
the employer of the agricultural labourer derives neither pleasure 
nor profit from that portion of his labourer's work which goes to- 
wards the production of what he pays to the tithe-owner — the 
tenth sheaf, the tenth lamb, the tenth part, or its equivalent, of all 
that is produced on his land— and he certainly does not pay 
wages for that work of which the produce does not go into his 
own barn or pocket. If he be a tenant, he calculates in his bar- 
gain for the land with the landlord what proportion of the pro- 
duce he has to pay to the tithe-owner, and fixes what rent he 
will give to the landlord accordingly. In the same way, in cal- 
culating what rate of wages he will give to the labourer, either 
by the day, or by the year, or by the job, he calculates what the 
labour will produce to him, and certainly pays no wages for that 
labour of which the produce goes into another man's pocket. He 
does not pay his labourers for one-tenth of their time and labour, — 
or, in other words pays them one-tenth less wages, — because one- 
tenth of the produce of their time and labour does not benefit him. 
The English labourer in husbandry works, in reality, every tenth 
day for nothing ; or, what is the same, receives every day one 
tenth less, be his wages high or low, than he would be earning, 
if the whole, instead of nine-tenths only of his time and labour, 
went to his employer. He really pays one-tenth of his time and 
labour, and consequently of his wages, in tithe to the tithe-owner, 
without any recompense. Nay, he pays more. His employer 
naturally seeks by the diminution of wages — that being the only 
outlay on which the farmer can economize at pleasure— some 



280 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

indemnification for the tenth of his seed, manure, horse-work, and 
the use of his implements, time, skill, and personal management, 
all employed, uselessly as far as regards his own profit, in raising 
the proportion of his crop that goes to the tithe-owner. Th^ 
burden also falls more or less upon the wages of the agricultural 
labourer. These are adjustments of interests which the farmer 
and labourer do not indeed make upon formal calculation, as in 
the adjustment of rent between the farmer and landlord, in con- 
sequence of the tithe, but they make themselves as certainly and 
unerringly as in bargaining for rent, on the natural principle of 
wages repaying the employer, or not continuing to be paid. 
Weighty pamphlets have been published on each side of the 
question, whether tithe be a real burden paid by the tenant, or 
by the land-owner. It is in reality paid by neither. The land- 
owner never acquired the tenth of his land with which the church 
was endowed. The clerical argument that the church has as 
clear a title to its one-tenth, as the landed proprietor to the other 
nine-tenths, is unquestionably good, and the church is, indeed, 
the older proprietor of the two. The flaw in this argument of 
the churchmen and lawyers lies here : the original proprietors of 
the land could only give the church what was their own to give 
— viz., one-tenth, or any other share of the land, but had no right 
to give, and could not give, what was not their own — viz., one- 
tenth of the time, labour, capital, and skill applied to the land, of 
other parties not then in existence. The spontaneous produce of 
the tenth of a farm was all that the original owners of it could 
endow the church with ; and on equitable principle, nothing more 
should have been valued in commutations of tithe, or drawn in 
tithe payments. The iniquity of the law has, however, laid the 
whole burden of the tithe in efiect upon the class of agricultural 
labourers— for out of them their employer, the farmer, gets his 
indemnification for his own outlay of capital, time, and skill, em- 
ployed in raising the tithe— and it is this pressure upon the body 
of agricultural labourers which keeps their condition so far below 
that of other labourers, and causes an incessant influx from it into 
the body of manufacturing labourers. Tithe is in reality the 
mother of poor-rate. When the English landlords complain of 
their poor-rates, they forget that the object of it, the poor man, 
has been paying all his life a much heavier rich-rate for them — 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 281 

viz., one-tenth of his time and labour, for the support of a cliiirch 
establishment to which the landlords and farmers contribute none 
of their own property; and that he would not be upon the poor- 
rate, if he had received all his life wages for all that his time and 
labour produced, instead of working one day in ten for no wages. 

Now this artificial and evil arrangement in our social system, 
which reduces to misery and to the vices associated with hope- 
less misery, both the agricultural and manufacturing classes of 
labourers, will be gradually and imperceptibly remedied, in the 
long run, by the aboUtion of the corn laws. This will be the 
true and beneficial efTect of the measure. It will bring about a 
natural equilibrium between all kinds of labour, by restoring 
agricultural labour to its just position of having no peculiar tax, 
such as that of tithe, thrown upon it alone ; and, by removing 
this pressure, will relieve the manufacturing labour-raarlvet from 
that forced influx into it which is the true cause of the low phy- 
sical and moral condition to which the manufacturing operative 
class is reduced. It is necessary to show how the abolition of the 
duty on foreign grain will raise the condition of the agricultural 
labouring class. 

Good farming, improved husbandry, increased production from 
land, are terms bearing a reference always to soils and climates. 
The worst and poorest farmer in the finer soils and climates even 
of Britain, as, for instance, in Essex or Kent, will raise more 
and better grain from a given area of land, than the best and 
wealthiest farmer can do in the worst soils and climates, such as 
in Caithness, Sutherland, or the Lewes. Superior management, 
skill, economy, and capital, may, indeed, in the nearly equal corn 
soils, and climate of Britain, admit of a competition, especially in 
the coarser kinds of grain, between extreme parts of the country; 
but when the British farmer has to make his profits out of land 
money-rented, taxed, tithed, poor-rated, and burdened directly or 
indirectly to a great extreme, in competition with farmers on the 
Continent with better soils and cliniates, and who arc cither 
owners, selling their surplus produce, or rather bartering it with- 
out much regard to profit, or else tenants paying proportions of 
what they raise from the land as rent, and even as taxes, without 
reference to the market value of what they pay, it is evident that 
he must change his system of farming, and must farm as they do, 
with the least outlay of money — must resort to the same system 
19 



282 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

as that with which he is placed in competition. The farmhig of 
extensive areas of land with great capital, the manufacture of 
corn from the soil by the application of hired labour, great skill, 
intelligence, and expensive management and machinery, as farm- 
ing is carried on in our most improved agricultural districts, will 
slowly but inevitably fall to the ground. Husbandry will come 
round to the Metayer system. The extensive farmer or tenant 
will become a tacksman subsetting for a portion of the crop, and 
for labour on the small space he may hold in his own hands, as 
much as he can of his farm to working husbandmen with work- 
ing families. This change will raise the condition of the whole 
class of labourers in husbandry, and they are the most numerous 
body of the people in every country in a sound state of social 
arrangement. The working husbandman with his family will 
be a better tenant than the non-working agriculturist with his 
skill, hired labour, and capital, because the value of the products 
will not repay the cost of these, and the capitalist who has to 
pay and feed labourers, subsist in a suitable way his own family, 
and replace his own capital with interest and profit, before he 
has any surplus for rent, can afford to pay no such proportion of 
the grain or other products of his farm in rent to the land-owner, 
as the working small tenant who has only to take his own sub- 
sistence and that of his family, as labourers, out of the products 
of the land, and divides the surplus with the landlord, as rent 
and payment of his skill and labour. The condition of the actual 
labourer on the land will be raised by this change in the agri- 
cultural system of the country, because tithe will no longer be, 
as at present, a deduction from the value of his labour, a burden 
upon his earnings alone. He will be, with respect to tithe, in 
the position in which the tenant stands now, who pays tithe out 
of the gross produce of the land as a portion of his rent, and de- 
ducts it from the amount which would otherwise go to his land- 
lord. He will also have gradations in his social condition attain- 
able by his skill and industry. He will be able to rise from trte 
situation of a single man working for subsistence in a working 
husbandman's family, to that of a working married husbandman 
farming land for a rent which the intelligent, well-conducted, 
working husbandman, however poor, is able to pay, viz., a pro- 
portion of the crops he raises. 

There will be no pressure upon the manufacturing class of 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 283 

labourers, from the body of agricultural labourers. Both classes 
will feel equally the relief Nor will the class of landlords suffer, 
perhaps, by the change. They will draw a much larger propor- 
tion of the product of the soil as rent — so much larger, that it will 
probably counterbalance the lower money value of those pro- 
ducts. If they draw two bolls of grain as corn rent from the 
same area of land which now pays them only the money price of 
one boll, the fall of the money price to one-half of the present 
rate will not injure them. The burden of tithe they cannot justly 
complain of It will be placed on the proper shoulders — on those 
who bought the land subject to that biu'den, and who deducted 
in the price they paid an equivalent consideration for it. The 
only question — and no doubt it is an all-important one — will be, 
how far the productiveness of the land of Great Britain may 
suffer, or be really diminished by this revolution in the agricultu- 
ral system of the country — this return to a small farm cultivation 
and rents in kind, which must inevitably follow the abolition of 
the corn laws. If we listen to the large farmer, the scientific 
agriculturist, the political economist, good farming must perish 
with large farms ; the very idea that good farming can exist, un- 
less on large farms cultivated with great capital, they hold to be 
absurd. Draining, manuring, economical arrangement, cleaning 
the land, regular rotations, valuable stock and implements, all 
belong exclusively to large farms, worked by large capitals, and 
by hired labour. This reads very well ; but if we raise our eyes 
from their books to their fields, and coolly compare what we see 
in the best districts farmed in large farms with what we see in 
the best districts farmed in small farms, we see, and there is no 
blinking the fact, better crops on the ground in Flanders, East 
Friesland, Holstein, in short, on the whole line of the arable land 
of equal quality of the Continent, from the Sound to Calais, than 
we see on the line of British coast opposite to this line, and in the 
same latitudes, from the Firth of Forth all round to Dover. Mi- 
nute labour on small portions of arable ground give evidently, in 
equal soils and climate, a superior productiveness, where these 
small portions belong in property, as in Flanders, Holland, Fries- 
land, and Ditmarsh in Holstein, to the farmer. It is not pretended 
by our agricultural writers, that our large farmers even in Ber- 
wickshire, Roxburghshire, or the Lothians, approach to the gar- 
den-like cultivation, attention to manures, drainage, and clean 



284 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

State of the land, or in productiveness from a small space of soil 
not originally rich, which distinguish the small farmers of Flan- 
ders and their system. In the best farmed parish in Scotland or 
England, more land is wasted in the corners and borders of the 
fields of large farms, in the roads through them, unnecessarily 
wide because they are bad, and bad because they are wide, in 
neglected commons, waste spots, useless belts and clumps of sorry 
trees, and such unproductive areas, as would maintain the poor 
of the parish, if they were all laid together and cultivated. But 
large capital applied to farming is of course only applied to the 
very best of the soils of a country. It cannot touch the small un- 
productive spots which require more time and labour to fertilize 
them than is consistent with a quick return of capital. But 
although hired time and labour cannot be applied beneficially to 
such cultivation, the owner's own time and labour may. He is 
working for no higher returns at first from his land than a bare 
living. But in the course of generations, fertility and value are 
produced ; a better living, and even very improved processes of 
husbandry, are attained. Furrow draining, 'stall feeding all sum- 
mer, liquid manures, are universal in the husbandry of the small 
farms of Flanders, Lombardy, Switzerland. Our most improv- 
ing districts under large farms are but beginning to adopt them. 
Dairy husbandry even, and the manufacture of the largest cheeses, 
by the co-operation of many small farmers — the mutual assur- 
ance of property against fire and hailstorms, by the combina- 
tion of small farmers — the most scientific and expensive of all 
agricultural operations in modern times, the manufacture of beet- 
root sugar, the supply of the European markets with flax and 
hemp by the husbandry of small farm.ers,— the abundance of 
legumes, fruits, poultry, in the usual diet even of the lowest 
classes abroad, and the total want of such variety at the tables 
even of our middle classes, and this variety and abundance essen- 
tially connected with the husbandry of small farmers, — all these 
are features in the system of the occupation of a country by small 
proprietor-farmers, which must make the inquirer pause before he 
admits the dogma of our land doctors at home, that large farms 
worked by hired labour and great capital can alone bring out the 
greatest productiveness of the soil, and furnish the greatest supply 
of the necessaries and conveniences of life to the inhabitants of a 
country. One common error in the usual comparison of the large 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 285 

farm and small farm systems — la grande and la petile culture — 
is to reckon as increased production from the soil the increased 
quantity of grain or other products sent to market by the large 
farmer from the same extent of land. A farm, for instance, of 
two hundred arable acres in the hands of a single farmer, may 
send to the market town a larger quantity of grain than if the 
land were occupied by ten or fifteen farmers with their families. 
But this, if correct to all the extent assumed by agricultural 
writers, is not increased production from the soil. It is in political 
economy only a different distribution of perhaps the same, or 
even a less amount of produce — it affects only the different pro- 
portions of a population living in the country by agriculture, or 
living in the towns by manufactiu'ing industry. The quantity of 
food of all kinds raised from the soil is not necessarily greater, 
because a greater proportion of it is consumed by the town popu- 
lations, and a smaller by the country populations. It may even 
be a question in social economy, whether the well-being of a peo- 
ple is promoted by that kind of artificial or forced system which 
sacrifices the comfort, and condition, or numbers of the agricultural 
labouring class of a country, to the prosperity and increase of its 
town or manufacturing populations. It may be a question whether 
the body engaged in agriculture should be deprived of its middle 
classes, its small farmers, its yeomanry, by the unnatural and forced 
value given to land by the combined operations of corn laws and 
of the exclusive political privileges attached to the possession of 
landed property. The true conclusion in political economy on 
the relative productiveness of the grande and petite culture, 
appears to be that the capital and skill of large farmers attain all 
over a country no augmentation of the products from soil and 
climate, which is not equally attainable by the labour, skill, and 
conjoined means of an intelligent body of small farmers. The 
traveller who looks without prejudice or preconceived opinion at 
the state of crops on the Continent wherever the small farming 
and small proprietary system is predominant, at the abundance 
and variety of food afforded by it to the xv.s\ of the population, 
and at the way of living, the cheapness, the physical comforts in 
diet and lodging of the working classes, and the whole social 
effect of the occupancy of land in small farms, will come to this 
conclusion — viz., that the largo farm money-rent system, which 
is almost entirely confined to Jirilain, is a kind of political estab- 



286 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

lishment, the growth of artificial arrangements of society, and 
fostered by the classes it supports; but is in reality not essential 
to good husbandry, or to the utmost agricultural productiveness 
of a country, or the utmost well-being of its inhabitarits. This 
establishment could not subsist but by protective legislation, and 
must give way when it comes in competition with agricultural 
production under the more natural small farm system. Food 
raised from our own soil will become more abundant, and in 
greater variety, by the increase of the number of its producers. 
This is the natural law of all production. The increase of the 
productive power of human labour applied to the inert material, 
the soil, will increase its products in some kind of proportion to 
itself. To diminish producers of food is the way our scientific 
agriculturists propose in their speculations to increase its quan- 
tity in a country. They attain thus only an apparent increase by 
a different and perhaps not very beneficial distribution of it. The 
quantity actually raised on the great scale, as in a whole country, 
undoubtedly is greatest on the system of small farms under a 
garden-like cultivation. The densest populations in Europe are 
those of Flanders and of Lombardy, and they are subsisted in 
comfort by land cultivated by small farmers. The experience of 
half a century in France proves that by the occupation of the 
country under small working farmers, the land is producing one- 
third more food, and supporting a population one-third greater 
than it did when it was possessed in large masses. America also 
proves that the land in the hands of small working farmers admi- 
nisters all that a people of similar tastes and habits to our own 
require, and far more abundantly than our system. " There is 
much food," says Solomon, " in the tillage of the poor :" — there 
is much sound political economy to be found in Solomon's Pro- 
verbs. 

A return to the small farm system, whether it be for good or 
for evil, must inevitably, although gradually, follow the abolition 
of the corn laws. Farming in our country must inevitably follow 
the cheaper modes of production with which it is brought into 
competition : for it is the law of all production, that cheapness 
commands both the markets, and the modes of producing. But 
how will this change affect the great body of money-rented ten- 
antry, the most respectable of our middle class in the country.^ 
This requires investigation. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 287 

What is rent ? Political economists tell u^ that rent arises from 
the difference of production between the best lands in the country 
and the worst that are under cultivation ; that the best only yield 
a rent when, from the pressure of population, the secondary 
lands come to be cultivated also, and then the difference of pro- 
ductiveness between the best and the second qualities of land 
affords a rent for the first ; that when the secondary lands become 
also cultivated, and a third still poorer class of land must be occu- 
pied, then the secondary yields a rent also — and so on until we 
come to the land altogether good for nothing— in comparison or 
competition with which the lands of a quality a little, however 
little, better will yield something as rent. This, if I mistake not, 
is Mr. Ricardo's theory of rent : but one can scarcely swear to it, 
for these theories of rent, money, population, pauperism, and all 
the other metaphysics of political economy, are very hazy sub- 
jects. You can never catch a steady view of them : and they 
raise a mist in the mind, through which things appear in very 
different shapes, and in very different relations to each other, from 
the reality. This theory of rent, it appears to me, explains only 
the cause of the differences of rent, but not what rent is itself. 
Rent itself, reduced to its simplest primary element, is merely the 
exchange of one kind of property, or rather of the use of one 
kind of property, for the use of another kind. It is a simple result 
of barter, and only connected with comparative fertility of land, 
by its amount or difference compared to rents Qf other land. 
Rent itself may be defined. It is the whole produce of the land, 
minus the hire of the time, labour, and skill which raise that pro- 
duce. In its simplest shape in society, it is the land-owner who 
pays a rent to the tenant or cultivator, not the tenant to the land- 
lord. The owner of a cow is the undoubted owner of all the 
milk his cow produces, but he is not owner of the dairy maid's 
time, labour, and skill, to make it into cheese and butter. That 
is another kind of property, and he must hire it, that is to say, 
must pay a rent to the dairy maid for the use of it. And what 
does he pay? He barters a proportion of his property, milk — 
or its representative, money — for a proportion of her property, 
time, labour, and skill. This is rent in its simplest shape, whether 
we speak of a cow, or of an acre of land ; and it is paid to the 
cultivator, not by him ; and all rent is so paid. It is only in the 
statement of the account between the parties in that small portion 



288 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

of the cultivated land of the earth which is money-rented, that 
it appears as if the tenant paid the land-owner. If the dairy maid 
was sent to market with the cheese and butter, and on her return 
paid the money it brought to the owner, deducting the value of 
her own time, labour, skill, and whatever she had furnished for 
producing the milk and butter, it would appear as if she was pay- 
ing him a rent for the cow, whereas she is only paying him the 
balance of his own produce, and she is the party receiving a hire 
or rent for her property. It is the same simple operation of bar- 
ter in all rent, as it exists in its natural shape, all over the world. 
In the South Sea Islands, in all the Continent of Europe, and even 
in the best farmed money-rented districts of Scotland, rent exists 
in this simple shape as a payment by the land-owner (or his sub- 
stitute, the farmer) to the cultivator, and in the original v/ay of 
giving him the use of a portion of the land itself, in payment for 
the use of a portion of his time and labour applied to the remain- 
der. Every farm has some cottar-tenants, under some name or 
other, receiving a rent in land for their time and labour. This is 
the first and simplest shape in which rent exists. The next is 
where, instead of the use of a portion of the land itself for the 
use of a portion of the cultivator's time and labour, his whole 
time and labour are hired for the whole land, and he is paid a 
proportion of its whole produce in corn, wine, wool, or whatever 
his labour is applied to. The third is where the cultivator, be- 
sides his time and labour, brings also skill, capital, seed, cattle, 
farm-stocking, &c., of his own to the cultivation, and is paid as 
his rent for these, a proportion so much greater of the produce of 
the land. This is the Metayer system, upon which almost all the 
arable land of Europe is, and ever has been, cultivated. The 
colonus partuarius is mentioned in the earliest ages ; and sheep 
Hocks, dairy produce, vineyards, orchards, and other branches of 
husbandry, could only be cultivated successfully by giving the 
cultivator an interest in the results. If we compare this Metayer 
system with our money-rent system it will be found to have this 
great advantage over it,, that the land-owner remains in his true 
position as owner of the land and all it produces, paying a pro- 
portion of the produce as rent to the cultivator or tenant, for the 
use of his capital, skill, time, &c., applied to the production, and 
he, the lanji-owner, shares, consequently, in the risk of bad seasons 
and crops as well as the farmer — stands his fair and equal chance 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 289 

of the loss as well as of the gain which the hand of Providence 
may dispense. This is altogether just in principle. Our artificial 
money-rent system is not just. The money-rented tenant paying 
thirty shillings per acre, perhaps, for iiis farm, in Scotland or Eng- 
land, is in reality an underwriter standing under the double bur- 
den of the risk of seasons for his landlord's share of what the 
land produces, as well as for his own. The competition for land 
to hire, in consequence of the monopoly of the property of land 
in large estates, and the difficulty, or impossibility, rather, of em- 
ploying small capitals with safety in any trade or manufacture in 
which the large capitals compete with, and ruin the small, forces 
the class of tenants possessing capital out of their natural position 
as cultivators paid for the use of their means of cultivation, into 
the position of the land-owners with respect to the risks and losses 
which equitably, and in a natural instead of a constrained artifi- 
cial system of land occupancy, would fall proportionably upon 
the latter. The money-rented tenant is not only an underwriter 
insuring his land-owner's interest in the produce of the land against 
the risk of seasons, but he is also an underwriter securing him 
against the fluctuation of markets, and a corn merchant paying 
all the expenses of transporting and marketing what, in any just 
view of the nature of rent, is not his property, but the land- 
owner's. It is his bargain, no doubt, and it is his own will to 
accept the lease of his land under such conditions ; but it is not 
an equitable bargain, nor a man's free will, when an artificial sys- 
tem has grown up under a protective legislation which leaves him 
no alternative but to step into all the risks for the land-owner, or 
let the land and his trade alone together. It is like the bargain 
and free will of the passengers in a vessel stranded on the Good- 
win Sands, treating with the Deal boatmen to bring them to land. 
The corn laws are the protective legislation under which this 
artificial relation between the land-owner and the cultivator has 
grown up. When these arc abolished, the relations between 
land-owner and cultivator will return to a sound and natural state. 
The land-owner will pay the cultivator the half or whatever pro- 
portion may be agreed upon, of the produce of the land, for his 
capital, skill, and labour in producing it, and run his own risks of 
seasons and markets. The present tenantry will return to the 
stale from which they fell — that of a yeomanry cultivating their 
own lands. Their smallest capitals, of two or three thousand 



290 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

pounds sterling, will then find small estates for their investment 
at the moderate price to which the reduced value of the produce 
of land will bring landed property. The artificial value given by ' 
protective legislation for the benefit of the land-owners, and by 
the exclusive privileges or political advantages attached to their 
kind of property, being taken away, a thousand pounds' worth 
of land will be as readily found in the market as a thousand 
pounds' worth of broad-cloth. Land will take the tendency to 
be distributed again in small estates of yeomanry and gentry 
living on and farming their own properties, instead of the tend- 
ency it has long had, to be concentrated m large masses in the 
hands of great capitalists. The condition of the money-rented 
tenantry will be improved. They will be relieved from the 
unjust position of having the risk of markets and crops thrown 
entirely on them. Many farmers in the Lothians, and they are 
not the most short-sighted of men, have of late stipulated for a 
rent payable partly or wholly in grain ; or in so many bolls per 
acre, valued at the average or fiar prices of the year. This is 
but a step, a feeling of the way in the dark. The true interpre- 
tatiorl of this sign of the times is, that the farmer finds that a man 
tied to the same money-rent, good seasons and bad, is in a false - 
position, is, in reality, an underwriter and a corn merchant as 
much as a farmer. A lucky Wednesday at the market cross, or 
an extra gill with the drover or corn dealer, may often make up 
for indifferent farming in the money-returns of the land. This 
dangerous corn trade they are gradually dropping. The next step 
will be to pay as rent not so many fixed bolls per acre, whether 
the season produces the crop or not, but a fixed proportion of the 
crops actually produced, or of the value they sell for in the market. 
The tendency clearly is to return to the natural principle of rent, 
as a payment by the land-owner to the cultivator, the land- owner* 
standing the risks of seasons and markets for his own interest in 
the produce. The consequences of this change will be, that the 
tenantry possessing capital will become yeomen-proprietors farm- 
ing their own estates. The husbandry class immediately below 
them, the men of industry, skill, and intelligence, but with little 
or no capital, will become Metayer tenants, and the working la- 
bourers in husbandry will become small farmers, holding land for 
their work. 

Important improvements in our social condition are linked to 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 291 

this inevitable change in the state of landed property. It will, in 
truth, produce a slow and quiet, but complete revolution in our 
whole social economy — one much needed, very beneficial in its 
results to the great mass of the community, and which never can 
come with less evil to any class, or interest, than through the 
gradual change brought about in the course of years by a regular 
act of legislation. It is a fact not to be denied, or blinked at, that 
the upper classes of the landed social body in Britain are too far 
removed by vast incomes, and conventional privileges and dis- 
tinctions, from all community of knowledge, business, interests, 
or feelings, with the middle or lower classes for whom they legis- 
late. They are in reality a kind of Brahmin caste in the social 
body at present, educated aloof, and living aloof from the mass 
of the nation. The landed proprietor is out of his just position. 
The man with an estate worth fifty, sixty, or eighty thousand 
pounds, enjoys far higher political privilege and influence, both 
in the public and in the local affairs of the country, than the mer- 
chant or manufacturer with an equal capital invested in concerns 
of far greater importance to the community, and requiring much 
higher talent for its management. The exclusive weight in society 
which belonged to landed property when it was almost the only 
kind of property, continues vested in a class who now are, from 
their very position in society, necessarily less experienced and 
versed in the various interests of a modern community than 
those for whom they act and legislate. Legislators and legis- 
latees have become two distinct tribes, inhabiting the same land, 
without common objects, interests, or knowledge. The Reform 
Bill failed to amend this evil in our social economy, because the 
Bill was founded on the false principle of continuing the mono- 
poly of political influence in one kind of property only, and 
merely attempting to increase the numbers of those partaking in 
the monopoly. But the abolition of the corn laws will amend 
the evil. The social influence of all kinds of property will be 
equalized. Property will not lose its social and political influ- 
ence, but landed property will have no more than its just and 
equal share ; and all proprietors who have a stake in the country 
by any description of property will have a voice in its affairs, 
through their representatives, proportionable to that stake. The 
landed proprietor will have to submit to be measured by the 
standard applied to other proprietors — viz., the value of his pro- 



292 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

perty and talents taken together — not by the feudal standard of 
the measurement of his land as property of a more noble kind 
than their money-capitals, machinery, or shipping, and entitled 
exclusively to legislate for these, and to form their representation 
in the legislature. The landed booby whose talents extend to 
crowing like a cock will no longer take his seat as of birthright, on 
the parliamentary benches with a Brougham, a Macaulay, or an 
O'Connell. This sound and rational distribution of the legislative 
power, and the equality of rights and advantages of all proprie- 
tors in proportion to their stake in the country, whether it be 
as capitalists, land-owners, or labourers, and whether invested in 
agriculture, manufacture, or commerce, without privilege of or 
pressure upon one kind of property, or class of people, more 
than another, will follow naturally a,nd necessarily, although 
gradually, in our social economy, from the abolition of all protect- 
ive duties on corn in favour of landed property. It will be a 
revolution. It may not be perceptible in the generation in 
which it is effected ; but on looking back from the higher state 
of well-being to which it will gradually raise all classes, it will be 
considered a great and beneficial revolution. 

But how will it not be perceptible in the present generation of 
land-holders ? How will it, in the end, be beneficial to them, and 
to their property ? 

Before this great alteration in our social economy can be entered 
upon, it will be necessary, in equity to all interests, to equalize the 
burdens on, as well as the privileges of, all kinds of property, and 
all classes of proprietors. The abolition of the corn laws, and of 
the monopoly of social and political influence attached to land, 
would be an act of spoliation and injustice, if not accompanied by 
an equitable adjustment of all the burdens on property. It is true, 
that land as a species of property, and landed proprietors as a 
class, enjoy pecuniary advantages by the effect of the duties on 
foreign grain, cattle, and all other agricultural products, at the 
expense of the other classes in the community — the moneyed or 
manufacturing and the labouring classes. It is also true, that 
landed property enjoys, almost in monopoly, that social and poli- 
tical influence which in this advanced state of modern society all 
other kinds of property ought proportionably to partake in. But 
it is also true, that land and landed proprietors pay to the rest of 
society, and pay dearly, for these unjust advantages and privileges. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 293 

Landed proprietors and their property would be much better off 
without them. The support of the poor, of the ecclesiastical and 
educational establishments of the country, of the police, of the 
whole materiel for the administration of the affairs of society, the 
public communications of roads, bridges, streets, the paving, light- 
ing, watching, the prisons and public buildings of every kind, in 
short, the whole standing expenses of the social economy of the 
country, are provided for almost exclusively by rates levied froni 
this kind of property — from land and houses. The fund-holder, 
the moneyed, the manufacturing, the labouring interests, contribute 
from'their kinds of property very little in proportion towards these 
needful expenses of society — the very poor who have expended 
youth and manhood in their service, and in adding-to their kind 
of property, are thrown back in old age to be supported by rates 
on landed property. It is usually argued that the landed proprietor 
draws back these payments, levied, undeniably, in no just propor- 
tion from his kind of property, by the high prices which conven- 
tional arrangements, such as the heavy import duties on foreign 
grain, cattle, and all other agricultural products, oblige the other 
classes of society to pay to him for the products of his land — that 
he thus draws back, in reality, in high rents what he iays out for 
the public in high rates. But this is not a sound argument in any 
view. It is a barbarous kind of adjustment to settle one injustice 
by another — to make the consumers pay more than they should 
do for their food, in order to recompense the growers for paying 
more than they should do for the necessary expenses of society. 
It is not just to oblige by law the owners of this kind of property 
to advance these necessary expenses of society for all the other 
classes and kinds of property in it, even supposing such a virtual 
repayment does take place by the operation of the corn laws— a 
repayment which it would be difficult to prove, and which certainly 
does not take place at all with that great mass of landed property 
which is subject to the heaviest burdens of all for the other kinds 
of property in the community — the land carrying houses not agri- 
cultural crops. But admitting that there is virtually a repayment 
of tliis outlay by the operation of the corn laws, admitting, too, 
that the exclusive social and political influence and privileges 
attached to landed property constitute another repayment in a 
different way, for the heavier burdens upon this kind of properly, 
it would manifestly be unjust to do away with these equivalents, 



294 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

however grievous and unjust they may be towards the rest of the 
community, without doing away at the same time with the heavy 
peculiar burdens for which they are the compensation. An equal- 
ization of all rates, taxes, payments, and burdens required in our 
social system, whether levied by the state for its general purposes 
of government, or by counties, towns, or parishes for their local 
purposes, imposing them equally upon all kinds of property in 
society, on funded, trading, manufacturing property, as well as 
landed property, must necessarily, and in common justice, precede, 
or go hand in hand with the abolition of the cprn laws. With 
such an equalization of burdens and privileges, the landed pro- 
prietor would have no right, and probably no cause, to complain. 
Poor rates, ceunty rates, and all local or general assessments being 
levied not as now almost altogether from his kind of property, but 
also from the property of the capitalist, fund-holder, merchant, 
manufacturer, and tradesman, according to value and amount, he 
would be relieved from burdens which in reality make land an 
honorary rather than a beneficial investment, and take it altogether 
out of the circle of employment of the working capitals of the 
country. These classes of proprietors would also be relieved by 
land becoming a kind of property in which a mass of working 
capital now forced into trade or manufacture, and ruining itself 
and all around it, would be beneficially absorbed. Over-produc- 
tion is undeniably the cause of the commercial and manufacturing 
distress of the country; but what is the cause of the over-produc- 
tion ? It is manifestly that the great mass of the property of the 
country, the land, is shut up from any beneficial use or employ- 
ment of it as property by the ordinary working capitals— all the 
capitals, it may be said, under 15,000/,, which the owners must 
lay out reproductively in order to live — and all this class of capitals 
is forced into trade and manufacture beyond the demand or con- 
sumpt of the world. This evil — which with the pressure upon 
manufacturing labour by agricultural labour, arising from the 
same cause as this pressure of all working capital upon trade and 
manufactures— is the radical evil to be cured in our social econ- 
omy ; and is only to be cured by abolishing the corn laws, and all 
the burdens for which they are the compensation, and placing 
landed property on the same footing as to burdens and privileges, 
as property in the funds, or in commerce, or in cotton works, or 
iron works. Land, as a property in the market competing with 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 295 

commercial or manufacturing investment, and neither raised 
above nor pressed below its just level by conventional causes, 
would absorb the capitals which now are, from necessity not 
choice, thrown all upon trading and manufacturing, and by over- 
production spreading ruin and distress among masters and opera- 
tives. This forced supply of capital into the one branch of pro- 
ductive industry — manufacture and trade— will be remedied by a 
preliminary equalization of all kinds of property, and a subsequent* 
abolition of the corn laws. 

Besides tliis adjustment of interests at home, which justice and 
policy require before the corn laws are abolished, an adjustment 
abroad is required in common prudence. The greater proportion 
by far of our supplies of foreign grain comes from the Prussian 
ports in the Baltic, Hamburgh, Bremen, and Holland, are but 
entrepots for grain originally shipped from these ports. Odessa, 
Archangel, St. Petersburg, and America send too inconsiderable 
quantities to govern our markets and prices, independently of 
the supplies from Dantzick and other Prussian ports. This ap- 
pears from Mr. Jacob's report. Now without some adjustment 
by treaty with Prussia previous to the abolition of the import duty 
on corn, we would be merely paying our present bread tax into 
the Prussian exchequer, instead of into our own. That would 
be the only effect of the abolition of the corn laws. What we 
took oft' in import duty, they would lay on in export duty. Why 
should they not ? There is no effective competition from other 
corn exporting countries sufficient to make the British market 
for foreign grain independent of the supplies from the Prussian 
ports, and those connected with Prussia in the German custom- 
house league. We are paying the price now of the supine policy 
of our former rulers and ministers in permitting the dismember- 
ment of Poland, which should have been at this day an inde- 
pendent country, exchanging its product — corn — for our product 
— manufactured goods. We are reaping the truit of weak policy. 
As matters stand, it was a sound measure proposed by the late 
administration to impose a fixed duty of eight shillings per quar- 
ter on wheat, and proportional duties on other grain, because if 
we do not levy it as import duty, Prussia and the other export- 
ing countries will levy it as export duty, and bread will not be 
cheaper to the British consumer by the same amount of duty 
going into the Prussian exchequer, instead of into the British, 



296 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

We are told, indeed, that this would be contrary to the interests 
of the land-holders in Prussian Poland, and the districts which 
supply Dantzick and the other Baltic ports with grain for expor- 
tation, and therefore no such export duty would be imposed. 
But this is the mere ipse dixit of political economists looking at 
the Continent with English eyes. It is not for the people that 
government exists in Prussia, but the people for the government. 
It is the obvious policy of Prussia to keep down the prosperity 
of the class of land-owners or nobility in her Polish province's. 
They are the natural heads and leaders of the people, of a people 
quite ready to revolt ; and to allow them to acquire wealth or 
independence by a favourable corn trade would be a suicidal 
measure. Besides the trading and manufacturing interests which 
Prussia is anxious to raise would be materially promoted by a 
remission of some taxes which the revenue of the state can only 
afford by levying an export duty on grain. 

The whole revenue of Prussia, according to the last statement, 
viz., for 1838, is, net, 525681,000 thalers. 

Thalers. 

The land tax (Grundsteuer) produces ... - 9,847,000 

The tax on trades (Gewerbsteuer) , an assessment on the estimated 

income from trade ---..- 2,054,000 

The tax on classes (Classensteuer) , a capitation tax according to 
the rank or social class of persons not in trade and not subject 
to the Gewerbsteuer ------ 6,502,000 

The indirect taxes on goods imported or exported, on the con- 
sumpt of home productions, on transport of goods, on shipping, 
and land carriage by tolls, and the stamp duties - - 20,130,000 

The monopoly of salt - - - - - - 5,620,000 

The rest of the 52,681,000 thalers of revenue is made up from 
rents of royal domains, from the post-office, lotteries, royal mines, 
and manufactures carried on by government or let out to licensed 
undertakers. Now from this schedule it appears, that land as 
property pays less in proportion than other kinds "of property to- 
■\vards the state. T-he direct tax on land (Grundsteuer), 9,847,000 
thalers, exceeds the direct taxes on personal property — the Ge- 
werbsteuer and Classensteuer together — only by 1,300,000 tha- 
lers. This is evidently not the proportion between the value of 
the land in this country, in which as yet there is little capital, and 
the value of other kinds of property ; and the latter are much 
more heavily taxed in proportion than with us. It appears also 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 297 

that poor rates, town rates, and such local burdens are not im- 
posed, as in Eiigland, on land or houses alone, but also on all 
other property — on trades, professions, or other sources of income, 
by a Gewerbsteuer and Ciassensteuer. These taxes, whether 
direct or indirect, on trade and industry, are adverse to the object 
of Prussia to raise a manufacturing industrial interest; and if a 
few millions of thalers could be raised by imposing an export 
duty upon the bread corn of our labouring classes, the Prussian 
government would be quite right in doing so. It would be able 
to relieve its own subjects of some of the taxes which press most 
heavily on their industry. The landed interest would have no 
just cause to complain, being still taxed or rated less heavily than 
other kinds of property ; and its markets would be no more 
affected by the Prussian export duty than at present by the British 
import duty. The price to the consumers — the British public — 
would be the same. It is evident that such a free trade in corn 
would not give us cheap bread. A discriminating duty on 
corn, that is a nominal duty on grain coming to us with only a 
nominal export duty upon it, and rising even to be prohibitive 
on grain shipped under heavy export duties at the foreign port, 
appears to be the nearest approach that can be made, without 
previous treaties with foreign powers, to a perfectly free trade in 
corn or timber. Free trade requires a free market to act in, that 
is, a market with free effective competition. But it appears from 
Mr. Jacob's report, that there is no effective competition from all 
the corn exporting countries of the world put together, in the 
British market wiih Dantzickand the other Baltic ports under the 
dominion of Prussia. 

The true free trade in corn is to be sought at home— in the 
free production of it, in relieving the land and labour employed 
in producing it from all unequal rates, taxes, and burdens, and 
from all social or political privileges or preferences that prevent 
working capitals from being invested in land. 

The abolition of the import duty on corn is a measure pregnant 
with unseen results. Many of the expected effects— such as that 
of reducing the cost of bread— are not exactly within the power 
of our own legislation, but require the concurrence of other go- 
vernments to produce them; and a revolution in our whole social 
economy inevitably attends it. Men in power may fairly be ex- 
20 



298 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

cused (whether they be tories or liberals) for not making up their 
minds so suddenly upon this great question, as those who see 
none of the difficulties or consequences may desire. It is unjust 
to blame the late or the present administration for hesitation, or 
delay in legislating on this measure. It is by no means a simple 
measure involving in its effect the price of the quartern loaf at 
the baker's shop, and nothing more. 



CHAPTER Xlir. 

NOTES ON THE RHINE — SWITZERLAND.— SWISS CHARACTER.— CHURCH 

OF GENEVA.— SWISS SCENERY. 

The Rhine is, no doubt, an historical river; but the political 
economist reads history in its stream difierently from the scholar, 
or the antiquarian. This river has been flowing these two thou- 
sand years through the centre of European civilization — yet how 
little industry or traffic upon its waters ! not one river barge in ten 
miles of river ! Is not this the effect of faulty social economy, of 
bad government, of restricted freedom among the twenty or thirty 
millions of people dwelling in communication with this great 
water-way? Is it not a bitter historical satire on the feudal in- 
stitutions which have so long reigned on either side of this river? 
In America, rivers not half a century old to any human know- 
ledge are teeming with floating craft exchanging industry for 
industry between rising cities, and communities of free self-go- 
verning men. This ancient river Rhine flows stately and silently 
through vast populations of feudally governed countries, and like 
one of its own dignified old barons, caring little for industry, com- 
merce, and civilization, but sweeping in lonely grandeur between 
robber castles of former days, modern fortifications, decaying 
towns, military and custom-house sentinels and functionaries, 
and beneath vine-dotted hills, around which the labouring man 
toils, and climbs, and lives as he did a thousand years ago, with- 
out improvement, or advance of any importance in his social con- 
dition. Is this the Rhine, the ancient Rhine, the Rhine that 
boasts of commerce, literature, science, law, government, reli- 
gion, having all sprung up in modern times upon its banks — 
this river, with half a dozen steamers carrying idle lady and 
gentlemen passengers up and down to view the scenery, and a 
solitary barge here and there creeping along its sides? Truly 
the American rivers, under the dcmocratical American govern- 



300 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

merits and social system, have shot ahead, in half a century, of 
this European river under the aristocratical European govern- 
ments and social system, although the European has had the 
start of the American streams by fifteen hundred or two thousand 
years. When Prince Metternich sits in his window-seat in his 
castle of Johannisberg, reading in some book of travels about the 
Ohio, or Mississippi, or Hudson, all teeming with the activity 
and civilizing industry of free, unrestricted men, what may be his 
thoughts vv^hen he lifts his eyes from the book, and looks down 
upon the Rhine ? It is here that the American traveller may be 
allowed to prose, at long, and at large, upon his favourite topic — 
the superiority of American institutions and government. He 
may begin his glorifications at Cologne, and end them at Basle, 
without interruption. 

The two small populations at the two extremities of the Rhine, 
far apart from and unconnected with each other, and in all phy- 
sical circumstances of country, soil, climate, means of subsistence, 
and objects of industry, as distinct and different as two groups 
of human beings well can be, are yet morally and nationally 
very like to each other. The same spirit in the'ir social economy, 
and a similar struggle to attain and preserve independence, and 
free political arrangements in their countries, have produced a 
striking similarity of character in the two populations. The Swjss 
are the Dutchmen of the mountains. They are the same cold, 
unimaginative, money-seeking, yet vigorous, determined, ener- 
getic people as the Dutch of the mouths of the Rhine. In private 
household life the same order and cleanliness, attention to small 
things, plodding, persevering industry, and addiction to gain, pre- 
dominate in the character of both, and as citizens, the same rever- 
ence for law, and common sense, the same zeal for public good, 
the same intense love of country, and, hidden under a phlegmatic 
exterior, the same capability of great energy and sacrifices for it. 
The Swiss, being less wealthy, but far more generally above 
want and pauperism than the Dutch, retain, perhaps, more of the 
virtues connected with patriotism ; and their two-and-twenty dis- 
tinct governments, all more or less liberal in form, and the neces- 
sity of watchfulness and energy in their united general govern- 
ment, keep alive in every man a spirit of devotedness to his 
country, which the traveller looks for in vain among the pea- 
santry of the monarchical states which allow no free action or 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER, 301 

participation in public interests to their subjects. The Swiss 
cantons bicker and quarrel among themselves as the American 
United States do ; but, like the dogs in a snow-traineau, they get 
on together not the less rapidly for their barking and biting — and 
a common object in view silences all differences. Some political 
observers conceive that this republican bundle of two-and-twcnty 
distinct states, different in laws, religion, and language, and placed 
between three monarchies jealous of the prosperity, and especially 
of the example of such free institutions, has but a very precarious 
lease of existence, in its present independent federal constitution. 
This is a mistaken view. The best and surest defence of a coun- 
try consists in its power of aggression. Switzerland has emi- 
nently this aggressive power — could throw a ball of fire from the 
Alps into the plains of Italy, which would kindle a flame that 
Austria or Sardinia could not quench; and with the south of 
France in no cordial subjection to the reigning branch of the 
Bourbon family, has a powerful moral aggressive force on that 
side also. Her population, too, is ^ one of military habits, united 
in sentiment for the independence of the country, accustomed to 
the use of arms, and the country strong in its ruggedness for its 
local defence by the inhabitants. Switzerland is in reality a 
heavier power in the European balance than some of the little 
kingdoms, such as Wurtemburg, Hanover, Denmark, Sweden, 
which class themselves among the secondary powers, and look 
upon the Swiss confederated states as of very inferior importance 
to their own. 

The Swiss appear to be a people very destitute of imagination, 
and its influences — remarkably blind to the glorious scenery in 
which they live. Rousseau, the only imaginative writer Switzer- 
land has ever produced, observes, " that the people and their coun- 
try do not seem made for each other." There is much truth in the 
observation. Men of all nations excepting of the Swiss nation 
itself, and of almost every station in life, are met with in Switzer- 
land wandering from scene to scene, pilgrims paying homage at 
every lake and mountain, to the magnificence of the scenery. 
The Swiss himself is apparently without any feeling of this kind. 
If it be possible to build out a fine view, or to put down a house 
exactly where one with any eye or feeling for the beauty of situa- 
tion or scenery would not place it, there the traveller may reckon 
upon finding the mansion and olliccs of the wealthy class of the 



302 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

Swiss, who could afford to indulge a taste, if they had it, for the 
fine scenery of their land. The Swiss speculators in hotels, and 
lodging houses for strangers, who are a numerous and respectable 
class, are altogether puzzled at the unaccountable preferences the 
strangers give to cottages on the lake side, to single houses, or inns 
in the little villages, instead of their superb chateaus in the middle 
of a market town, or built out from every prospect by magnificent 
office houses. The Swiss, in truth, are altogether utilitarian. 
Material interests are at the top, bottom, and middle of their minds. 
They have not a spark of fancy in their moral composition, no de- 
lusion of themselves, or others. Yet, without imagination, they 
have great energy, great patriotism, and a strong sense of public 
duty; and, with their military habits, these are more to be de- 
pended upon for the stubborn defence of their country and its in- 
stitutions, than a temporary volatile enthusiasm. This peculiar 
spirit and character may be ascribed to the peculiar occupation of 
a great portion of the Swiss people. They have for ages been the 
hirelings of Europe, either in public or private service, as soldiers, 
or as domestic servants. Pay has for ages been the only influ- 
ence, in general and constant operation on the Swiss mind in every 
class of society, and has weakened the efficiency of any higher 
influences and feelings in aflairs, than self-interest. Point cP ar- 
gent, point de Suisse, has extended from their military to all their 
social relations. A great proportion of the young men of Switzer- 
land have small farms, or houses with portions of land, and rights 
to grazing in the Alps of their native parishes, to succeed to upon 
the death of their parents ; but until that event in their social posi- 
tion, they are supernumeraries at home, their labour not being 
necessary for cultivating the paternal acres, and their subsistence 
more, perhaps, than the land can afford. They have no colonies 
to migrate to, no labour to turn to, except labour of skill which all 
cannot learn, or live by, and no considerable manufacturing em- 
ployment, except in two or three cantons, to absorb their numbers, 
and they enlist, therefore, readily for a few years in Swiss regi- 
ments in foreign service. France, after the restoration of the 
Bourbons, had, if I mistake not, about 17,000 men of Swiss regi- 
ments ; and the disgust of the French nation at the prefereiKie 
shown to these mercenaries was a main cause of the expulsion of 
Charles X. Naples has at present four regiments of these mer- 
cenaries, Rome as many: and it is reckoned that from 8,000 to 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 303 

10,000 Swiss are in foreign service at present, embodied generally 
in Swiss regiments distinct from the native troops of the country. 
They are the condottieri of the middle ages, serving for their pay, 
and without any other principle, or attachment real or assumed, 
or any pretext of higher motive for their service. In other ser- 
vices, the rudest soldier, the most arrant scamp, the vagabond, the 
deserter from other regiments, lays the flattering unction to his 
soul, that destiny, folly, hard necessity, wildness of youth, love of 
distinction, of country, of honour, something, in short, connected, 
with principle or fate, has led him into the military service. But 
these Swiss have no principle, real or imaginary, but pay. They 
engage generally for terms of four or six years,and receive a bounty 
of one Napoleon for each year they engage for. This bounty is 
not paid to them in full upon enlistment, but a portion of it is 
placed to their credit in their llvret, or book, which every private 
has in foreign services, and is paid to them at the expiry of their 
engagements, to enable them to return home from the port of Ge- 
noa, to which those serving in Italy are sent free of expense if 
they do not choose to re-engage for a new term of years. They 
receive much higher pay than the native troops. A subaltern in 
a Swiss regiment in the Neapolitan service told me his pay is better 
than that of a captain in a Neapolitan regiment. The men receive 
four gran and bread, and the elite, or old soldiers who have re- 
enlisted, five gran per day, and their ration of eight ounces of meat 
costs but three gran. They are consequently well off' as soldiers, 
are always in good quarters, and under their own Swiss officers, 
and both at Naples and Rome are undoubtedly fine, well appointed 
troops. Scotland formerly furnished the same kind of condottieri 
to Holland, Sweden, and France, but the advance of industry and 
manufacVflre at home, the colonization of America, and the de- 
mand of England for labour from the poorer country, extinguished 
this kind of military service; nor was it in Scotland so devoid of 
all connection with principle, so entirely mercenary, as the Swiss 
enlistments of the present day. The Scotch peasant enlisted un- 
der his clansman, or the son of his landlord, who from attachment 
to the Stuart cause, or difference of religion, or from national pre- 
judice, preferred foreign service to the Jkiiish, even with inferior 
pay. The recruiting also for foreign service was unacknowledged 
and private. But the Swiss government sanctions (his demoral- 
izing system, allows the recruiting publicly, and with the same 



304 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

protection and regulation as for a national army ; and sells, for the 
benefit of a few aristocratic families, principally of Bern, who 
officer these mercenaries, the military services of her young men 
to support the most arbitrary governments in Europe. The Pro- 
testant republic of Bern furnishes one regiment entirely for the 
service of the kingof Naples, and even in the Pope's body guards 
there are Protestants from Bern and other Protestant cantons. 
No government can set principle at defiance with impunity. These 
men return to their little spots of land, devoid of religious habits, 
or feelings, or attachment to any religious faith. This service 
keeps up through the whole population of Switzerland, principles 
and conduct adverse to religious character. The men who thus 
enlist to pass their youth in the most vicious and bigoted cities in 
Europe — Naples, and Rome — are not the refuse of their country, 
but the sons of respectable peasants, who are to return to their 
little heritages, and marry, and settle as fathers of families. If 
the Swiss character be mercenary, and devoid of feeling for higher 
influences or motives than pay, the taint comes from this source. 
Yet it is surprising, and suggestive of very important reflections, 
how an enlightened self-interest keenly appreciating its own pri- 
vate advantage in the public good, keeps a people honest, sober, 
industrious, highly patriotic, and in the active and regular dis- 
charge of all private and public duties as men and citizens, with- 
out the higher influences of religion. But so it is. The Swiss 
people present to the political philosopher the unexpected and 
most remarkable social phenomenon of a people eminently moral 
in conduct, yet eminently irreligious ; at the head of the moral 
state in Europe, not merely for absence of numerous or great 
crimes, or of disregard of right, but for ready obedience to law, 
for honesty, fidelity to their engagements, for fair de§.ling, so- 
briety, industry, orderly conduct, for good government, useful 
public institutions, general well-being, and comfort — yet at the 
bottom of the scale for religious feelings, observances, or know- 
ledge, especially in the Protestant cantons, in which prosperity, 
well-being, and morality seem to be, as compared to the Catholic 
cantons, in an inverse ratio to the influence of religion on the 
people. Plow is this discordance between their religious and 
their moial and material state to be reconciled ? It is so obvious, 
that every traveller in Switzerland is struck with the great con- 
trast in the well-being and material condition of the Protestant 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 305 

and Catholic populations, and equally so with the difference in 
the influence of religion over each. Tins influence is at its mini- 
mum in Protestant, and at its maximum nearly in Catholic Switz- 
erland ; and the prosperity and social well-being of the people 
are exactly the reverse. How is this? Is it that the Swiss peo- 
ple, at home and abroad, see the utility of moral conduct, the 
utility of temperance, fidelity, self-restraint, honesty, obedience 
to law, patriotism, and defence of their country : and of their 
independent political establishments, see the advantages, the pay, 
in short, of moral conduct and patriotism, in every shape and 
way, and are, therefore, eminently moral and patriotic, yet nof 
from religious principles or influences, but altogether from an 
enlightened self-interest? It is a very remarkable social state, 
similar, perhaps, to that of the ancient Romans, in which moral- 
ity and social virtue were also sustained without the aid of reli- 
gious influences. 

I happened to be at Geneva one Sunday morning as the bells 
were tolling to church. The very sounds which once called the 
powerful minds of a Calvin, a Knox, a Zwingli, to religious exer- 
cise and meditation, were now summoning the descendants of 
their cotemporaries to the same house of prayer. There are few 
Scotchmen whose hearts would not respond to such a call. I 
hastened to the ancient cathedral, the church of Saint Peter, to 
see the pulpit from which Calvin had preached, to sit possibly in 
the very seat from which John Knox has listened, to hear the 
pure doctrines of Christianity from the preachers who now stand 
where once the great champions of the Reformation stood 5 to 
mark, too, the order^ and observances of the Calvinistic service 
here in its native church ; to revive, too, in my mind, Scotland 
and the picturesque Sabbath days of Scotland in a foreign land. 
But where is the stream of citizens' families in the street, so re- 
markable a feature in every Scotch town when the bells are toll- 
ing to church, family after family, all so decent and respectable in 
their Sunday clothes, the fathers and mothers leading the younger 
children, and all walking silently churchwards ? and where the 
quiet, the repose, the stillness of the Sabbath morning, so remark- 
able in every Scotch town and house? Geneva, the seat and 
centre of Calvinism, the fountain-head from which the pure and 
living waters of our Scottish Zion flow, the earthly source, the 
pattern, the Rome of our Presbyterian doctrine and practice, has 



306 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

fallen lower from her own original doctrine and practice than 
ever Rome fell, Rome has still superstition ; Geneva has not 
even that semblance of religion. In the head church of the ori- 
ginal seat of Calvinism, in a city of five-and-tvventy thousand 
souls, at the only service on the Sabbath day — there being no 
evening service — I sat down in a congregation of about two 
hundred females, and three-and-twenty males, mostly elderly men 
of a former generation, with scarcely a youth, or boy, or working 
ma^n among them. A meager liturgy, or printed form of prayer, 
a sermon, which, as far as religion was concerned, might have 
figured the evening before at a meeting of some geological society, 
as an "ingenuous essay" on the Mosaic chronology, a couple of 
psalm tunes on the organ, and a waltz to go out with, were the 
church service. In the afternoon the only service in towns or in 
the country is reading a chapter of the Bible to the children, and 
hearing them gabble over the Catechism in a way which shows 
they have not a glimpse of the meaning. A pleasure tour in the 
steam-boats, which are regularly advertised for a Sunday prome- 
nade round the lake, a picknick dinner in the country, and over- 
flowing congregations in the evening at the theatre, the equestrian 
circus, the concert saloons, ball rooms, and coffee houses, are all 
that distinguish Sunday from Monday in that city in which, three 
centuries before, Calvin moved the senate and the people to com- 
mit to the flames his own early friend Servetus, the discoverer of 
the circulation of the blood, and one of the first philosophers of 
that age, for presuming to differ in opinion and strength of argu- 
ment from his own religious dogma. This is action and re-action 
in religious spirit with a vengeance. In the village churches 
along the Protestant side of the Lake of Geneva — spots upon this 
earth specially intended, the traveller would say, to elevate the 
mind of man to his Creator by the glories of the surrounding 
scenery — the rattling of the billiard balls, the rumbling of the 
skittle trough, the shout, the laugh, the distant shots of the rifle- 
gun clubs, are heard above the psalm, the sermon, and the barren 
forms of state prescribed prayer, during the one brief service on 
Sundays, delivered to very scanty congregations, in fact, to a few 
females and a dozen or two old men, in very populous parishes 
supplied with able and zealous ministers. 

What may be the causes of this remarkable difference in the 
working of Calvinism in Switzerland and Scotland? The 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 307 

churches of Geneva and Scotland set out together on their Chris- 
tian pilgrimage, in the days of Calvin and Knox, with the same 
profession of faith, the same doctrines, and the same forms in 
congregational worship. We, the vulgar of the kirk of Scotland, 
have at least always been taught to consider the church of Geneva 
as the mother-church of our Presbyterian faith, and established 
church usages— the njodel by which both our doctrines and prac- 
tices were framed and adjusted into their present shape. How 
widely the two have wandered from each other ! The member 
of the Scotch kirk comes out of the church of Geneva inquiring if 
it be a Calvinistic or Lutheran service he has been attending — the 
liturgy, or printed prescribed form of prayer, is there, the organ 
is there, and the sermon is a neat little moral essay that might do 
for either, or for any congregation. Scotland is at this day the 
most religious Protestant country in Europe ; and in no country 
in Europe, Protestant or Catholic, is the church attendance worse, 
the regard for the ordinary observances of religious worship less, 
the religious indifference — not entitled to be called infidelity, not 
so respectable as infidelity, because not arising from any reason- 
ing or thinking, wrong or right, about religion — greater than in 
Protestant Switzerland, in the district of our Calvinistic mother- 
church in and about Geneva. Whence is this remarkable differ- 
ence ? The starting point of the human mind was the same in 
both countries, at the same period, and under the same leaders, 
Calvin and Knox ; and the present divergence of the human mind 
in its religious direction in Switzerland and Scotland is as striking 
as was the original coincidence. 

The only obvious cause of this divergence is, that the state and 
church in Switzerland have from the first engrafted on Calvinism 
a bastard Lutheranism. It is characteristic of Calvinism as re- 
ceived in Scotland, that it is the only branch of Christianity which 
flourishes independently of all church establishments, state assist- 
ance, or government arrangements, and requires no union of 
church and state. Spiritual, and unconnected with forms, it is 
injured by government interference and regulation. In Scotland 
itself religion is more nourishing in the Secession than in the 
Established Church, simply because the former is a voluntary, 
the latter a state church. The doctrine and church observances 
and education of the ministers are the same in both. The state 
has— and Calvin himself in conjunction with the state, to prevent 



308 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

probably the excitement of the public mind by the extemporary 
prayers of fanatic preachers adapting their effusions to the pass- 
ing feelings of their congregations, or to keep them exclusively 
Calvinists, and out of the hearing, as far as possible, of other 
impressions — prescribed a set form of printed prayer, a liturgy, in 
settling the church discipline and usages of the church of Geneva. 
The Scotch Calvinistic church, about sixty years after the Reform- 
ation, repudiated such interference, even from the church power, 
with individual freedom of thought and expression in prayer, as 
being contrary to the genuine spirit of Calvinism. The Scotch 
were more Calvinistic than Calvin himself. Time has proved that 
the Scotch kirk was right. In Switzerland, in attempting to guard 
the people by prescribed forms against the diseases of fanaticism 
and erroneous doctrine, the state and Calvinistic church have 
inoculated the people with the worse disease of indifference. It 
is the same experiment for the same object, and with the same 
results, which Prussia is trying in our times with the Protestant 
religion in Germany — to make it a subservient machine to state 
or church policy, to hold the minds of men enslaved to a civil or 
clerical' system of government by religious ties. 

The Lutheran and Church of England clergy, it may be said, 
are also confined to prescribed printed forms of prayer — true ; 
but in the old Lutheran and Anglican churches these forms of 
ceremonial prayer — selected, translated, and improved from the 
more ancient popish service — are, as in the Roman Catholic 
church, the sum and substance of the religious service. The 
sermon is only an adjunct of secondary importance in the service 
of the day. But in the Calvinistic church, as we conceive of it 
in Scotland, the substance of the service is in the sermon ; and 
the best sermon loses half its effect, the best preacher half his 
power, if applicable, appropriate prayer, composed under the 
same impressions and feelings as the discourse, be superseded by 
set forms issued by the state, and which in Switzerland, not hav- 
ing the venerated antiquity, the admirable eloquence, and the 
application to every condition and every mind, of the fine ancient 
liturgy of the English church, not being interwoven with the very 
existence of the church, as in the old Lutheranisra, are listened to 
rather as proclamations to heaven of the church and state, than 
as prayers. The influence of the preacher is impaired. He stands 
in the pulpit in a false position as a free Calvinistic minister, with 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 309 

this dead weight of a leaden, meager Hturgy round his neck. He 
is not in the position of the Church of England or old Lutheran 
clergyman, who in the delivery of his prescribed liturgy is per- 
forming the most important part of his pastoral duty, and one 
consistent, not discordant, with the principle and spirit of his partly 
ceremonial church, in which the pastor's individual labour as a 
preacher is but secondary and subsidiary. This false position in 
their own pulpits necessarily lowers the moral and religious tone 
and energy of the clerical character in the Swiss clergy. Their 
liturgy, too, is in itself a meager, nnimpressive composition. They 
attempt to remedy their false position in the pulpit, by introducing 
occasional prayer in the middle and as part of the sermon itself. 
This smuggled prayer is, in itself, of very impressive effect in 
pulpit oratory. It is rarely used by our Scotch preachers; but 
here it is so common, that the peasants, who sit with their hats on 
during the sermon, are on the watch when the preacher is sliding, 
from addressing them, into prayer, to take off" their hats until he 
returns to the thread of his discourse. This practice shows, I 
conceive, that ministers feel themselves in a false and inconsistent 
position, in being only allowed to exercise half their duty — that 
of addressing their congregations — not the more important half — 
that of addressing their Creator in prayer — according to their own 
feelings, impressions, and powers. This position also gives the 
pastor too much the character with the people of a functionary of 
the state and church, who has his routine duty to do, and is paid 
for doing it like other functionaries. The routine duty of reading 
their short meager liturgy is too brief to be a regular impressive 
church service, and yet it prevents any other mode of prayer. 

The usual form of church duty in the Calvinistic parishes is 
this: The minister first reads a short prayer, the people standing; 
tlieii gives out two verses of a psalm, which are well performed, 
there being an organ generally even in country churches, and all 
the psalm-books having the notes of the music printed with the 
psalms— and the common people understand music enough to use 
the notes. The text is read while the people are still standing, and 
they then sit down, and old men and peasants generally put on 
their hats while the minister delivers his sermon. The sermons 
are always read from papers ; but some of the young clergy use 
the papers very little, and seem to have them merely as notes to 
refresh the memory. The printed forms of prayer are then read. 



310 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

They have at least the mqrit of being very short. None of the 
congregation have them in their hands. They are not used hke 
the EngUsh prayer-book, by the congregation as well as by the 
minister, but only by the minister. A couple of verses of a psalm 
concludes the service, which, with a brisk tune on the organ — 
the fashionable opera air of the day — to go out of church with, 
occupies about three-quarters of an hour. This is all the church 
service on Sundays. The afternoon service is a meeting of the 
children, who after a prayer (a printed form) and a psalm without 
the organ, are examined in the Catechism. Baptisms, churchings, 
and such duties, are performed ; but there is no sermon and no 
congregation, either in town or country in the afternoon, unless it 
be on some special occasion, such as a charity sermon. 

This supine state of the Protestant church in Switzerland is 
owing greatly to the effects, indirect and direct, of the last war. 
The indirect effects were those on the minds of the people bred 
up in the very centre of military movement, amidst excitement, 
bustle, and employments which left little time or inclination for 
any religious education. The grown generation, and perhaps 
their progeny, show that little value had been put upon religious 
observances, habits or instruction, in the days of their youth. 
The direct effects were, that during the war, youth of talent 
and good education found in other professions a more congenial 
and better recompensed career than in the church. It was aban- 
doned to those who had no ambition or talent for any other pro- 
fession 5 and the standard both of learning and abilities in the 
clerical profession fell during the war below the standard of other 
professions. It is not to be denied that something of the same 
kind took place in Scotland, also, during the last war. The 
church did not obtain her fair proportion of the high-minded, 
high-gifted, and high-educated youth of the country, to fill her 
ranks; and she is now under the paroxysm of a strong re-action, is 
filled with ambition, and an active spirit too great for the narrow 
circle of her social influence in a country of widely spread dissent, 
of habits of independent thinking, and of general education and 
intellectual culture not inferior to the standard of the clergy them- 
selves. The agitation of late in the Scotch church is perhaps 
owing to this false position of the clergy with the people. The 
moral influence of great superiority of education, and of acquire- 
ments unattainable by the multitude, is wanting to the Scotch 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 311 

churchman from the low standard of education which country 
presbyteries required in Ucensing preachers. As a sacred class 
of men, the Calvinist admits no superiority or influence to the 
licensed or ordained clerical preacher, more than to any lay or 
other preacher, either in the theory or practice of reUgion, It is 
to the gifts, talents, intellectual acquirements, not to the empty 
ordination ceremony, or clerical function, that social influence is 
given. But the established clergy in Scotland have no superiority 
in these over the clergy of the Secession, and neither have any 
over the youth of the middle classes who study for the lower 
branches of the legal or medical professions, or for filling up their 
leisure hours in commercial, manufacturing, or other ordinary 
vocations of life. They are not fenced in, as in the English 
church, by expensive forms of education dividing the clerical 
class from other men however well educated ; nor by essential 
forms, as in the same ceremonial church of England, which none 
but the regularly ordained clergyman can legally, or, in public 
opinion, perform in a religious sense ; nor, as in England, by the 
ignorance of the rest of society, from whose want of education 
the clergyman, however poorly educated himself, derives a certain 
social influence. They have in Scotland neither more knowledge, 
nor of a higher kind, than the people they have to instruct. They 
have no status in public opinion simply from being ordained, and 
unfortunately are struggling for influence and power as a clerical 
body co-ordinate with the civil power in the state, without laying 
the foundation — superiority of attainments and education— on 
which alone clerical power or social influence can rest in an edu- 
cated country. 

The young men of the Swiss church stand higher, compared 
to the people, in education, than, those of the Scotch. They are 
elected by the people from a lect sent from government. The leet 
is made up by the consistory from the roll of licensed candidates, 
according to their standing or seniority. The candidates are first 
suflragans or assistants to parish ministers. They are all paid by 
the state, and are, undoubtedly, in the present generation, well- 
educated, pious men. A reaction has taken place in the Swiss as 
in the Scotch church, and in both the young clergy, not the old, 
lead the movement. But in Switzerland the movement seems 
confined to a very small circle, chiefly of females, around the pas- 
tor. The men appear not to enter into that circle. The taint in 



312 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

the flock is too deeply seated in the constitution of the Swiss church, 
and in the social state of the people, to be cured by their clergy in' 
one generation. 

The late insurrection in the canton of Zurich, in 1839, in which 
the peasantry, headed by some of the clergy, overturned, not 
without bloodshed, the local government, for having appointed 
£)r. Strauss to the chair of theology, may appear altogether at 
variance with this low estimate of the Swiss religious character. 
, I Was in Switzerland at the time ; and from all I could learn, I 
considered it political, not religious, and confirming the opinion 
of the low religious state of the country. Dr. David Frederic 
Strauss pubhshed, in 1835, his Life of Jesus — Das Leben Jesu* 
— avowedly with the object of overturning all belief in those 
events of or connected with our Saviour's history, which cannot 
be reconciled to, or explained by, the ordinary course of natural 
operation. He brings to this attack upon Christianity and the 
miracles not the wit, ingenuity, or philosophy of a Voltaire, a 
Hume, or a Gibbon, but a mass of learning and biblical criticism, 
which, his admirers say, the church is unable to match. The 
weight of profound scholarship and philosophical criticism is, it 
seems, all on the side of infidelity ; and the most able and leanied 
of the German theologians— no superficial scholars in biblical lore 
— have, it appears, been worsted in the opinion of the learned by 
this Goliath. In the wantonness of power the authorities of 

* Dr. Strauss's Leben Jesu was admitted into Prussia by the college of 
censorship, in consequence of a minute of Professor Neander, one of the 
censors, and one of the most eminent divines in Prussia, which stated, "that 
if the - interpretation of the original history of Christianity laid down in Dr. 
Strauss's work were to be generally received, Christianity, as at present un- 
derstood, would certainly be at an end. The work, however, is written with 
such philosophical earnestness and science, that a prohibition of it by the 
state would be unsuitable, because it can only be overcome in the fields of 
learning and philosophic science; and it is moreover, a work which can 
scarcely penetrate beyond the circle of the learned. Such a character of Dr. 
Strauss's work, from a scholar and divine of such eminence in biblical litera- 
ture, places it beyond the contempt of ordinary theologians, who may affect 
to sneer at what they cannot even read. Why do not our young clergy with- 
draw from their political economy, and their non-intrusion or intrusion politics, 
and refute the errors in philosophical criticism and in biblical learning of his 
antagonist, who, at the age of five-and-twenty, or thirty, has thrown down the 
gauntlet to the divines of Europe 1 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 313 

Zurich chose to call Dr. Strauss to tho vacant theological chair in 
their university— to appoint a learned man who denies and con- 
troverts the very facts and foundations of all Christianity, to teach 
theology to those who are to instruct the people in the Christian 
faith. This attempt on the part of a government shows suffi- 
ciently the state of religion in the country. It was defeated, 
not from any new-born religious zeal of the people, but because 
the misgovernment and perversion of the powers entrusted by 
the community to their rulers, in this absurd appointment, were 
apparent ; and the ministers found no want of followers, from 
the roused common sense of the people, even among those who 
perhaps bad not crossed the church door for six months, to go to 
Zurich and displace magistrates who had abused their delegated 
powers so obviously. So little of religious zeal entered into this 
movement, that Dr. Strauss, as he had received the appointment, 
was allowed the retiring pension of a professor. The people ap- 
pointed new members without changing the forms of their govern- 
ment, retired to their mountains and valleys, and this revival was 
at an end. The present commotions in Argau, also, appear to be 
entirely a struggle between Protestants and Catholics for property 
and political power. 

The snowy peak, the waterfall, the glacier, are but the won- 
ders of Switzerland; her beauty is in her lakes — the blue eyes 
of this Alpine land. The most beautiful passage of scenery in 
Switzerland is, to my mind, the upper end of the Lake of Geneva, 
from Vevay, or from Lauzanne to Villeneuf. Scenery more 
sublime may be found on the lakes of Lucerne, Zug, IJrientz ; 
but in the pure, unmixed sublime of natural scenery, there is a 
gloom, essential perhaps to it, which cannot lon^ be sustained 
without a weariness of mind. Here the gay expanse of wafer 
is enlivening ; and the water here is in due proportion to the 
landward part of the scenery — not too little, nor too much, for 
the mountains. The climate, too, under the shelter of the high 
land, the vegetations of various climes upon the hill-side before 
the eye at once, have a charm for the mind. The margin of the 
lake is carved out, and built up into terrace above terrace of 
vineyards and Indian corn plots ; behind this narrow belt, grain 
crops, orchards, grass fields, and chestnut-trees have their zone ; 
higlier still upon the hill-side, pasture grass and forest-trees oc- 
cupy the ground; above rises a dense mass of pine forest, broken 
21 



314 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

by peaks of bare rock shooting up, weather-worn and white, 
through this dark green mantle ; and last of all, the eternal snow 
piled high up against the deep blue sky— and all this glory of 
nature, this varied majesty of mountain-land, within one eye- 
glance ! It is not surprising that this water of Geneva has seen 
upon its banks the most powerful minds of each succeeding 
generation. Calvin, Knox, Voltaire, Gibbon, Rousseau, Madame 
de Stael, Lord Byron, John Kemble, have, with all their essential 
diversities and degrees of intellectual powers, been united here 
in one common feeling of the magnificence of the scenery 
around it. This land of alp and lake is indeed a mountain- 
temple reared for the human mind on the dull unvaried plains 
of Europe, to which men of every country resort from an irre- 
sistible impulse to feel intensely, at least once in their lives, the 
majesty of nature. The purest of intellectual enjoyments that 
the material world can give is being alone in the midst of this 
scenery. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

NOTES ON SWITZERLAND.— MONTREUX.— CHECKS ON OVER-POPULA- 
TION—SWISS DAIRY.— AGRICULTURAL.— SOCIAL CONDITION. 

It is of iFie people of the countries I visit, not of the scenery, — 
of poUtical and social economy, not of rocks and wilds, forests and 
floods, that I would speak, even in Switzerland. During two 
successive summers of late years, I fixed myself in the parish of 
Montreux, on the side of the Lake of Geneva, not far from the 
castle of Chilon. The locality is celebrated in every note-book, 
delineated in every sketch-book of every sentimental tourist from 
the days of our grandmothers — for before Byron sung, and when 
Chilon was nothing more than it now is — an old French-like 
chateau, very suitable for its present use— a military magazine — 
the locality was the region of sentimentality and hot-house feel- 
ing ; for here Rousseau had placed his Julie, and St. Preux ; and 
Clarens, and Meillarie, and all that is real or unreal in the Heloise 
— are here or hereabout. But the locality has its own claims on 
the political economist as well as on the romantic tourist. We, 
the inhabitants of the parish of Montreux, are of unspeakable in- 
terest in the speculations of the enlightened prosers on political 
economy in the winter evening re-unions of Geneva and Lausanne. 
They demonstrate, from our sage example, to a simpering circle 
of wives and daughters-in-law, the wisdom, duty, possibility, and 
utility of keeping the numbers of a community, be it a nation, 
parish, or family, in due Malthusian ratio to the means of living. 
We of this parish have the honour of being cited in print to all 
Europe— besides the cities of Geneva and Lausanne— as an edi- 
fying example of sagesse on the great scale, as a perfect and re- 
markable instance of the application of moral restraint by a whole 
population upon their own over-multiplication. It appears from 
the register of this our parish of Montreux that the proportion of 
births to the population is 1 to 4G, while in the rest of Switzerland 



316 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

it is reckoned 1 to 27 or 28 inhabitants. In England ihe propor- 
tion is 1 in 28 ; in France, 1 in 32 or 33 ; in Prussia, 1 in 25 ; in 
Bohemia, 1 in 24 ; in the old Venetian states, 1 in 22 ; in Russia, 
1 in 18 or 19. This remarkably small proportion of births to the 
population in our parish is ascribed to the late period of life to 
which the peasants put off their marriages. 

Sir Francis d'lvernois published in 1837 a pamphlet" Enquete 
sur les Causes patentes ou occultes de la faible Proportion des 
Naissances a Montreux," in which, with some ill-supported con- 
clusions, he makes many valuable observations. The strength 
of nations, their wealth as regards population, depends, he justly 
observes, not on the number of births, but of persons born who 
attain a useful age. The true and valuable increase of the popu- 
lation of a country depends, in short, upon the principle of making 
as many men as possible out of as few children as possible. If 
one-half of the children born die before they attain a useful age, 
the rearing them has been a national loss, not a national gain. 
The population of eifective people in Russia, with 1 birth to 
every 18 or 19 persons, may not be advancing so rapidly as that 
of France with 1 birth only to 33 persons. The observation is 
applicable to the supposed rapid increase of the population of the 
United States ; more die before reaching the age of utility, and 
the rearing them is a loss, in reality, to the country by the time, 
labour, and expense of their food and rearing, if they die before 
that age. In. this parish, in which 1 birth is the average to 46 
people, 1 death is the mortality to 75. In Switzerland, in general, 
1 in 42 is reckoned the average mortality. In the canton Thur- 
govia, in eighteen years before 1824, the births were 1 in 27, and 
the deaths 1 in 31 ; so that in reality its population was increasing 
in a slower ratio than that of this parish with its births 1 in 46, 
and its deaths 1 in 75. There, one-half of the infants die before 
their fifth year. Here, nineteen out of twenty reach the first year 
of life, and very nearly four-fifths of those whom the present 
venerable minister has baptized have lived to receive the sacra- 
ment from his hands. This diminished mortality Sir Francis as- 
cribes to the postponement of the age of marriage, by which a 
healthier child is produced than in precocious marriages, and the 
child is better nursed. The postponement of the marriages to a 
later age, and also the fewer births in families, Sir Francis ascribes 
to a moral restraint acted upon by the population of this parish, 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 317 

both before marriage, and also after they have entered into the 
marriage state— a restraint, it seems, which their untutored good 
sense leads them to exert, and entirely conformable to the moral 
restraint inculcated by Malthus and Dr. Chalmers, This moral 
restraint, as an effective check upon the tendency to over-multi- 
plication, is, in reality, mere delusion. Moral restraint is an ex- 
pression ill-defined. The propagation of the species by marriage 
is not immoral in itself. It may be imprudent for a man to marry, 
and have a family of children whom he cannot support ; but it is 
confounding the landmarks of morality and prudence to say that 
marriage is moral in Canada, and immoral in Kent ; or should be 
placed under moral restraint when a man's banker's book, or his 
employer's tally book is against him, but is a moral and laud- 
able transaction if the balance be on the right side of the page. 
It is a delusion, or even worse in character than mere delusion, 
to conjure up false feelings of moral restraint, and erect a false 
moral standard in the human mind against acts which, however 
imprudent, are not immoral, and in all times, and under all cir- 
cumstances, unchangeably immoral. The immorality which it 
is proposed by these political economists to put under moral re- 
straint, is the imprudence of marrying without means to maintain 
a family. This imprudence is founded upon the poverty of the 
parties. This poverty again is founded upon what ? Upon their 
moral delinquency ? No, but upon the state to which they were 
born ; but this is no moral guilt — it is the effect of an evil con- 
struction of society, of a wrong distribution of property in it, by 
which a numerous class succeed to no property whatsoever. It 
is rather too much for our political economists to enlist moral re- 
straint into the defence of the fictitious feudal construction of 
society. This parish of Montreux proves the very reverse of the 
conclusions of Sir Francis d'lvernois, as to the use of this false 
moral restraint on improvident marriage. It shows that econo- 
mical restraint is sufficient. Our parish is divided into three com- 
munes or administrations. In that in which I am lodged, Vey- 
taux, there is not a single pauper, although there is an accumu- 
lated poor fund, and the village thinks itself sufficiently important 
to Iiave its post office, its fire engine, its watchman; and it has a 
landward population around. The reason is obvious without 
having recourse to any occult moral restraint, or any tradition of 
the evils of over-j)opulation from the fate of the ancient Helve- 



318 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

tians, as Sir Francis absurdly supposes possible, whose emigration 
from over-population Julius Caesar repressed with the sword. 
The parish is one of the best cultivated and most productive vine- 
yards in Europe; and is divided in very small portions among a 
great body of small proprietors. What is too high up the hill for 
vines is in orchard, hay, and pasture land. There is no manufac- 
ture, and no chance work going on in the parish. These small 
proprietors, with their sons and daughters, work on their own 
land, know exactly what it produces, what it costs them to live, 
and whether the land can support two families or not. Their 
standard of living is high, as they are proprietors. They are well 
lodged, their houses well furnished, and they live well, although 
they are working men. I lived with one of them two summers 
successively. This class of the inhabitants would no more think 
of marrying without means to live in a decent way, than any 
gentleman's sons or daughters in England ; and indeed less, be- 
cause there is no variety of means of living, as in England. It 
must be altogether out of the land. The class below them, again, 
the mere labourers, or village tradesmen, are under a similar eco- 
nomical restraint, which it is an abuse of words and principles to 
call moral restraint. The quantity of work which each of the 
small proprietors must hire is a known and filled up demand, not 
very variable. There is no corn farming, little or no horse work, 
and the number of labourers and tradesmen who can live by the 
work and custom of the other class, is as fixed and known as the 
means of living of the land-owners themselves. There is no 
chance living— no room for an additional house, even for this 
class, because the land is too valuable, and too minutely divided, 
to be planted with a labourer's house, if his labour be not neces- 
sary. All that is wanted is supplied ; and until a vacancy natu- 
rally opens, in which a labourer and his wife could find work and 
house room, he cannot marry. The economical restraint is thus 
quite as strong among the labourers as among the class of pro- 
prietors. Their standard of living, also, is necessarily raised by 
living and working all day along with a higher class. They are 
clad as well, females and males, as the peasant proprietors. The 
costume of the canton is used by all. This very parish might be 
cited as an instance of the restraining powers of property, and of 
the habits, tastes, and standard of living which attend a wide 
diffusion of property among a people, on their own over-multipli- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 319 

cation. It is a proof tiiat a division of property by a law of suc- 
cession difterent in principle from the feudal, is the true check 
upon over-population. 

The speculations of political economists on this subject are, 
with us, confined to philosophical discussion ; but on the Conti- 
nent—in Swhzerland and in Germany — they have been adopted 
as a basis of practical and altogether monstrous legislation. 
The Thurgovians, taking the alarm at the facts, that in 18 years 
preceding 1824, the proportion of births among them had been 1 
in 27 of the people, and of deaths 1 in 31, and that in another 
canton, that of Tecino, of 77,000 people 2,932 were new-born, a 
vast proportion of whom died within the first year, proposed — 
that is, the administrators of their poor rates proposed — to their 
legislative body, that the marriages of the poor who were unable 
to pay the quota to the poor tax should be prohibited. The first 
article of their proposed law prohibits the marriage of males who 
live by public charity : the second requires that to obtain permis- 
sion to marry, a certificate from the overseers of the poor must be 
produced of the industry, and love of labour, and of the good 
conduct of the parties, and that, besides clothes, they are worth 
700 francs French, or about 30/. sterling. The third article of this 
extraordinary law in a free state makes the marriage admissible 
without the proof of this 700 francs of value in movable pro- 
perty, if the parties have furniture free of debt, and pay the poor 
tax of 1 per mille upon fixed property. Their legislative body 
had sense enough to reject this absurd proposition in 1833. The 
canton of St. Gall, however, actually has imposed a tax on mar- 
riages ; and to make it popular, the amount goes to the poor fund. 
It fails, because, according to Sir Francis d'lvernois, it is too low, 
being 46 francs, about 71 francs French, or about 3/. sterling ; and 
because it is not graduated according to the ages of the parties, 
so as to prevent early marriages. But he thinks the principle 
excellent, as both Ricardo and Say, it seems, recommend the post- 
ponement of the marriageable age of the poor as an object of 
legislative enactment, — but not of the rich. Professor Weinhold, 
who proposed, in 1836, the infibulation of both sexes in Prussia to 
prevent the increase of population, was a sage and wise legislator 
compared to these great political economists, for his operation 
would have been at least equal for all classes ; and not a law 
affecting one class only. In (jermany, commissaries have actu- 



320 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

ally been appointed by some governments (Bavaria among others) 
who are invested with the power to refuse permission to marry 
to those whom they judge not able to support a family. They 
have a veto on marriages. All this monstrous, and demorali- 
zing, and tyrannical interference with the most sacred of those 
private rights for which man enters into social union with man, 
is the consequence of the absurd speculations of our English po- 
litical economists and their foreign proselytes, who see clearly 
enough the evil, but who do not see, or are afraid to state, that the 
remedy is not in a false code of morality, imposing moral restraint 
upon an act not immoral, — the marriage of the sexes ; nor in a 
false code of laws for preventing the most powerful stimulus of 
nature ; but in raising the civilization, habits, mode of living, and 
prudence of the lower classes of the community by a wider diffu- 
sion of property among them, by an inoculation of the whole 
mass of society with the restraints which property carries with it 
upon imprudence and want of forethouglit in human action. The 
object of the laws which these political economists propose to 
themselves is the postponement of marriages among the lowest 
class to 26 or 30 years of age, when it is assumed healthier chil- 
dren will be procreated. Of 214 marriages in this parish, the 
average age of the males was found to be 30, and of the females 
26y\ years. But it is by no means an ascertained fact in physics, 
that the progeny of parents advanced far beyond puberty are more 
healthy than of parents who have just reached the age of puberty. 
Our breeders of cattle, sheep, horses, and dogs of valuable races, 
seem, on the contrary, to find improvement instead of deteriora- 
tion from putting them together at earlier ages than formerly. 
Our nobility and gentry in England marry at much earlier ages 
than our lower classes : and they are certainly finer animals than 
these or almost any other of the human species. Other causes 
than the age of the parents form the constitution of animals ; and to 
legislate upon a fact so imperfectly ascertained is sufficiently ab- 
surd. The ages of 30 and 26 years are probably the average of 
the greater proportion of marriages among our own lower and 
middle classes at present in Britain. On the Continent, most of 
the civil codes fix the age of puberty for females at 16, and for 
males at 18 years, and probably marriages do take place at >an ear- 
lier age abroad than with us. Sir Francis d'lvernois states that at 
Prselognan, in the States of Sardinia, in which a premium and 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 321 

even a pension is paid to fathers of families who have above 12 
children, upon the old exploded idea that the numbers of the 
population form the strength of the state, the young men had 
voluntarily entered into a secret association, binding themselves 
not to marry before 2S years of age, in consequence of the misery 
they saw produced in their valley by over-population. They 
show intelligence in thisresohition ; but no such association would 
be necessary in any community in which property was attainable 
by industry ; for in few situations can or does the labouring man, 
if he is in the way of earning anything by his labour, think of 
marrying at an earher age than 28 or 30. It is only in Ireland, 
or in Sardinia, that the peasant sees no prospect of being better 
off at 2S or 30 years of age than at 18 ; and therefore very natu- 
rally and very properly marries at 18, or very early in life, so as 
to have a prospect of children grown up before he is past the age 
to work for them ; and who will be able to work for themselves, 
and perhaps for him when he is worn out. It is also by no means 
an ascertained fact, that a woman marrying at 26 and a man at 
30 years of age will not have as large a family, as marrying at 
18 and 20 years of age ; and it is clear that their children will 
not be so soon ready to help them. In Russia, the Emperor Nico- 
las fixed by an ukase, in 1830, the marriageable ages at IG for 
females, and 18 for men ; but this is stated by Sir Francis to arise 
from a circumstance which will scarcely be credited in civilized 
coimtries. The value of estates in Russia is reckoned according 
to the number of serfs; and the landed proprietors raise or force 
a population on their estates. And how ? As the male does not 
arrive at puberty so early as the female in the human species, the 
infant husband's marriage bed is filled by his father, until he comes 
to puberty ! — So says Sir Francis. But this barbarous practice 
for augmenting the number of serfs upon an estate is scarcely 
credible ; and can scarcely be general, if it ever did exist. It is 
more reasonable to suppose, that marriages below the ages fixed 
by the ukase took place to avoid the military service, as fathers 
of families would of course not be so liable to conscription as 
unmarried men ; and therefore the military age must be attained 
before a man can legally marry. 

Political economists have unfortunately used in their specula- 
tions the ambiguous term of moral restraint. Malthus evidently 
used it originally, as contra-distinctive merely to the tcims legal 



322 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

restraint or physical restraint; but not as restraint founded on 
moral principle, on the moral innate sense of right or wrong. 
Prudential restraint, or economical restraint, would, perhaps, have 
expressed his meaning less ambiguously. But his followers, and. 
perhaps he himself in some passages, lost sight of the original 
meaning, and followed the ambiguity in the meaning of moral, 
so as to set up a new moral delinquency repugnant to the innate 
sentiments of right and wrong in the human breast. Men heard 
with indignation marriage, however imprudent and reckless, 
classed with fornication, or theft, as a moral delinquency ; and 
the morality or immorality of human action seriously stated even 
by divines, by Malthus and Dr. Chalmers, to depend upon pru- 
dential considerations. The rough untutored common sense of 
all men of the lower class rejected this new code of morality ; and 
the socialists and radicals with reason crow over the ecclesiastics 
in this argument. They ask for what purpose is this new-fash- 
ioned moral obligation in the most important of the actions of 
man, his marriage, to be inculcated ? Is it to support any natural 
and necessary system of society ? No. But to support an artifi- 
cial feudal division of property originating in the darkest and 
most barbarous ages, by which one son alone succeeds to the 
land, and the others with their posterity are thrown into that 
pauper class who must live on the taxes or alms of the rest of 
the community ; and must be debarred by legal enactment or by 
a false tuition of their moral obligations, from the common right 
of all animals, that of propagation by the law of their species by 
pairing or marriage. On the Continent, where speculative ideas 
are pushed to the extreme, the legitimate deduction from this 
new moral restraint has been carried to an extent which may 
alarm our pious moralists who first propounded it. The obliga- 
tion of this moral restraint on the poor is carried into their mar- 
riage beds. There are some subjects which it is difficult to treat 
with decency of expression. The physician, and also the moral- 
ist, occasionally meet with cases in which a clear understanding 
can only be attained at the expense of modesty. What is meant 
by this kind of moral restraint in marriage ? The prefet of the 
Department de la Somme, Monsieur Dunoyer, in transmitting to 
the communes of his department the money allotted for the 
maintenance of their paupers, publishes the following circular 
letter: "There are not two ways of escaping indigence. Fa- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 323 

milies in indigence can only extricate themselves by activity, 
good sense, prudence, and economy — prudence, especially in the 
conjugal union, in avoiding icith an extreme care to render 
their marriage more fruitful than their industry.^^ What is 
meant by this " evitant avec un soin extreme de rendre leur ma- 
riage plus fecond que leur Industrie ?" Does it mean this official 
manifesto of the magistrate, which, if not law, comes with the 
force of an injunction from the administrator of the law, does it 
mean to recommend the stifling the fruits of marriage after 
birth ? or before birth ? or does it mean some practice which it 
is against modesty to imagine ? It is perhaps impossible to come 
nearer to the subject in decent language: but this "evitant de 
rendre leur mariage fecond" can only mean one or other of these 
three modes of avoiding any fruits of marriage ; or it must mean 
a separation of the parties from bed and board after cohabitation, 
or a rendering marriage de facto a temporary cohabitation, a 
marriage for a few months, renewed, or not, according to pecu- 
niary or convenient or economical circumstances. The Count 
Villeneuf de Bargemont, a prefet, counsellor of state, and deputy, 
under Charles X, in his " Economic Politique Chretienne, 3 vols. 
8vo. Paris, 1834," takes this latter more innocent meaning, but 
one as injurious to social happiness as that which our political 
economists are supposed by the foreign political economists to 
have intended to recommend : and after a profound research into 
the writings of the fathers of the church, finds that" the Christian 
religion places continence between husband and wife, when it is 
by mutual consent, among the highest of virtues," In that en- 
lightened age, the eleventh century, more than one instance 
occurred during the Heptarchy, of royal saints who attained 
canonization by reaching the summit of this highest of virtues, 
by marrying, bedding, sleeping together, and remaining in vir- 
ginity all their lives. It is somewhat curious in the nineteenth 
century to find a Catholic lawyer imagining that two Protestant 
divines, one of the English church, and one ot the Scotch, re- 
commend this first of Christian virtues, and charitably coming to 
their assistance, and proving by citations, and authorities from 
the fathers, that their doctrine is quite agreeable to Christianity. 
The principal difficulty to be got over in the theory of this 
doctrine is in the simple question. Why marry at all, if people 
are not to live comformably to the married state, and to have fa- 



324 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

milies in it ? or why not marry for a time, for a year or two, a 
month or two, a night or two ? The principal difficulty in the 
practice of this continence in marriage among the poorer class 
lies exactly in the circumstance which its foreign expounders 
consider as making it necessary — in their poverty. Where is the 
indigent family to find two rooms and two beds? or are they to 
sleep together husband and wife, yet preserve continency ? or are 
they to resort to any of the three other means hinted at, of " 6vi- 
tant de rendre leur mariage plus fecond que Jeur Industrie ?" Sir 
Francis d'lvernols suspects that the peasantry of Montreux must 
practise this latter precious moral means of preventing their mar- 
riages being more fruitful than their industry, and puts the ques- 
tion to their venerable minister. The old gentleman, who is in 
his ninety-fifth year, evidently laughing at the gullibility of the 
political economists of Geneva, refers him to the other side of the 
lake, the Catholic side, for information, as on his Protestant side 
there is no confessional through which the priest can become ac- 
quainted with such secret sins of his parishioners ; and observes, 
that in his youth the political economists from Geneva used to 
deplore the unprolific constitutions of the Vandoise females ; and. 
now it is become a subject of their congratulation ; but in his 
opinion, hard work, in which, as proprietors working for them- 
selves, they persevere, he thinks, even to an excess, exemption 
from misery, there being no destitution or extreme poverty, and 
exemption from great superfluity, or means of indulgence inde- 
pendent of work, have much to do with the matter ; and have 
raised among his flock a spirit of prudence, inculcated from gene- 
ration to generation, which postpones marriages until the parties 
can support a family. Sir Francis d'lvernois considers it quite 
certain that in France the practice of this highest of Christian 
virtues, the " 6vitant avecun soin extreme de rendre leur mariage 
plus feconde que leur Industrie," is extensively diff'used ; because 
the proportion of births to the population has since the Restoration 
been diminishing regularly; and is now only 1 in 33, or even less. 
Is it not more reasonable to suppose, that the same causes which 
in this parish of Montreux have, in the enlightened opinion of the 
minister, reduced the proportions to 1 in 46, are in operation also 
on a great scale in France ? that the possession of property has 
given to the whole population the habits of caution and prudence, 
and the use of gratifications of civilized life, which necessarily 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 325 

postpone marriages until a later period of life, and until a pro- 
perty is acquired adequate to the higlier standard of living intro- 
duced by this universal diffusion of property ? The additional, 
and iiitherto unnoticed physical check pointed out by the minister, 
upon over-population in a country of small landed proprietors, 
must also have had its effect in France, viz., the spirit of hard 
work and of unremitting occupation of mind and body about their 
little properties, which the pastor of Montreux thinks is carried 
even to excess, and which is intimately connected with two other 
physical checks — the earlier age at which the pastor thinks his 
female parishioners cease to be prolific, and the prolongation of 
the period of nursing. The fact that France is supporting one- 
third more inhabitants from nearly the same extent of arable land 
than before the revolution, proves that this population must be 
much more laborious, and give more care and incessant work to 
their land. It is needless to add that idleness is a great originator 
of population, and is altogether propagational— and hard or in- 
cessant occupation of body and mind a most powerful physical 
check upon it, and is altogether anti-propagational. 

The most profound observation ever made in the science of 
political economy is that of Solomon — " The destruction of the 
poor is their poverty." It is their poverty that causes their over- 
multiplication, and their over-multiplication their poverty. Cure 
tlieir poverty, give them property, inoculate the whole mass of 
society with the tastes, habits, and feelings of prudence which 
attend the possession of property, by abolishing the laws of suc- 
cession which tend to concentrate all property in one upper class, 
and over-multiplication is cured. It is evidently curing itself ra- 
pidly in France, without the unnatural and immoral restraints 
recommended by political economists to be taught as injunctions 
of religion and morality by their clergy, or to be enforced as law 
by the local authorities. 

Political economists do not enter into the position of the poor 
man under our feudal construction of society. They arc ignorant 
of his calculations. They pour out the vials of their wrath against 
him for marrying Without having the means of supporting a family. 
But in his position it is the wisest and most moral step ho can take. 
He marries early, because he has a more reasonable chance of 
raising his children to an age to provide for themselves if he mar- 
ries early, than if he postpones his marrying until an age when 



326 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

he must be failing in capability of work before they can work for 
themselves. If his family have no property, or reasonable pros- 
pect of property, but from their work, the sooner he can produce 
two or three working hands to help in their common subsistence 
the better. It is wisdom in his position to marry at twenty years 
of age, and folly to postpone it to thirty or thirty-five or forty, 
because he will be getting past hard work, especially piece-work, 
in the latter case, before his children can earn wages for full work 
as grown-up men and women. To tell him to wait until his savings 
enable him to keep his children is but a mockery. Wages of la- 
bour in no trade or position of life in which the mass of labourers 
exist admit of any such saving, without the giving up of all habits 
of civilization. It is out of the wages of labour, day by day, that 
the poor must subsist their families, not by any possible accumu- 
lation of savings out of their wages. If they postponed their 
marriages for such an accumulation, according to the recommend- 
ation of our political economists, they would find themselves be- 
tween fifty and sixty years of age, when a hard-worked man is 
sensibly failing, burdened with children to support, of an age too 
young to support themselves. The poor act much more wisely 
in having children grown up, and the expense of their infancy 
and rearing over, before they themselves begin to fail. It is here 
we see the truth of Solomon's observation that " the destruction 
of the poor is their poverty." Give them property, as a class, by 
abrogating the feudal law of succession, and all other impediments 
to the widest difiusion of property through society, and the moral 
and economical restraints arising from property and prudential 
consideration, would postpone their marriage age until the period 
most suitable for their interests. The very same prudential con- 
sideration hastens their marriage age now, in their hopeless, end- 
less state of destitution of property. The state of France furnishes 
a remarkable illustration of this principle. In France property is 
widely diffused, population is increasing, yet the number of births 
is decreasing. Of those born many more live to be added to the 
population, although the actual births are in proportion almost 
one-third fewer in numbers than in countries in which property is 
not diffused as in France. Can there be a more satisfactory proof 
of the right working of the great social experiment now in pro- 
gress in France ? The number of children reared in proportion 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 327 

tion with respect to food, lodging, and domestic habits of those 
who rear them — of the people. 

A political economy opposed to the moral and natural economy 
of society is unsound. It rests upon an arbitrary expediency only. 
The speculations upon artificial checks to the increase of popula- 
latioii by legislative, educational, or conventional restraints incon- 
sistent with the natural rights, moral duties, and social relations of 
the individuals composing the po.orer classes, are altogether false 
in principle. The administration of the poor law by the commis- 
sioners in England — the separation of husband and wife — of pa- 
rents and children — the confinement in workhouses of all receiving 
relief — cannot be justified on any principle but expediency ; and 
on that, anything — the veto on marriages among the poor — the 
enormities alluded to by Sir Francis d'lvernois — anything and 
everything in short may be justified. The destitute either have a 
right or have not a right to relief If they have not, it is a robbery 
to take the sum from the richer class to relieve them. If they 
have, from the nature and constitution of property and society, 
a right inherent in them as animals to such a portion of the fruits 
of God's earth as will maintain them, it is unjust and tyrannical 
to withhold that portion, except on conditions inconsistent with 
their free agency and enjoyment of life as moral inteUigent beings. 
The expediency-principle of making the poor-rate relief as sour 
as possible to the receiver, in order to lessen the pecuniary burden 
on the giver, would justify the exterminating, or torturing, or 
mutilating the pauper class. This is from first to last a false legis- 
lation. The expediency itself arises only from false legislation — 
from throwing the whole burden of supporting the poor upon one 
kind of property only, and one class of proprietors : and then at- 
tempting, by such an administration of the poor rates, to alleviate 
the burden which this exemption of all other kinds of property 
necessarily accumulates to a ruinous extent upon that one kind — 
the land. 

In Switzerland each parish has its Alp, that is, its common pas- 
ture, for the cows of the parish — which is the proper meaning of 
the word Alp — and each inhabitant is entitled to a cow's grazing, 
or half a cow's grazing, from June to October, on this common 
pasture. The grazing rights are highly prized, for the Swiss 
peasant is extravagantly fond of his cow. To pass a winter 
without a cow to care for, would be_ a heavy life to him. Few, 



328 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

however, have cows in sufficient number to repay the labour of 
attending them at the summer grazing in the Alps, The proper- 
ties are too small, in general, to keep more than five or six cows 
all winter: and few can keep more than half that number. Yet 
these small proprietors contrive to send cheeses to market as large 
as our Cheshire dairy farmers with their dairy stocks of forty or fifty 
cows, and farms rented at 200/. or 300/. a year. This is a signal 
instance of the absurdity of the flogma in agriculture so implicitly 
received by all our political economists from books on farming — 
that small farms are incompatible with good husbandry, or farm- 
ing operations on a great scale. Gruyere and Parmesan cheeses 
are quite as large as Cheshire cheeses ; and, as the price shows, 
are incomparably better in quality. They are made by small 
farmers, each of whom has not, on an average, the milk of half 
a dozen cows to make cheese of. Each parish in Switzerland 
hires a man, generally from the district of Gruyere, in the can- 
ton of Freyberg, to take care of the herd, and make the cheese ; 
and if the man comes from Gruyere, all that he makes is called 
Gruyere cheese, although made far enough from Gruyere. One 
cheeseman, one pressman or assistant, and one cowherd, are con- 
sidered necessary for every forty cows. The owners of the cows 
get credit, each of them, in a book daily, for the quantity of milk 
given by each cow. The cheeseman and his assistants milk the 
cows, put the milk all together, and make cheese of it, and at the 
end of the season each owner receives the weight of cheese pro- 
portionable to the quantity of milk his cows have delivered. By 
this co-operative plan, instead of the small-sized, unmarketable 
cheeses only, w^hich each could produce out of his three or four 
cow's milk, he has the same weight in large marketable cheese 
superior in quality, because made by people who attend to no 
other business. The cheeseman and his assistants are paid so 
much per head of the cows, in money or in cheese, or, sometimes, 
they hire the cows, and pay the owners in money or cheese. 
When we find this, which of all operations in husbandry seems 
most to require one large stock, and one large capital applied to 
it, so easily accomplished by the well-understood co-operation of 
small farmers, it is idle to argue that draining, or irrigation, or 
liming, or fencing, or manuring, or any operation whatsoever in 
farming, to which large capital is required, cannot be accom- 
plished also by small farmers — not small tenant-farmers, but 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 329 

small proprietor- fanners like the Swiss. In October the cows are 
brought home, and the home grass-lands having been mown for 
hay twice during the summer, the winter food is provided, and a 
very small area of land keeps a cow when the home grass has 
not been burdened with the summer grazing. The pasture in 
these Alps, or summer grazings, is abundant and rich. In some 
of the upper valleys, inhabited winter as well as summer, but in 
which the corn-crops are secondary, and dairy produce the main 
object^as, for instance, Grindewald — a man with a house suita- 
bly situated is permanently established for receiving the milk of 
the neighbourhood. Each family takes care of and milks its own 
cow or cows, keeps the milk wanted for family use, and sends the 
rest of it daily to the cheeseman, who gives each family credit for 
the quantity of milk delivered each day ; and the cheese made 
during the season is divided, or very usually the cheese is mar- 
keted, and the money divided : and in this way cheeses of great 
weight are manufactured, although no one cow owner has milk 
enough to make one of marketable size. I went one warm fore- 
noon, while ascending the Rhigi, into one of these dairy houses. 
From the want of dairy-maids, or females about the place, and the 
appearance of the cow-man and his boys, I thought it prudent to 
sit down on the bench outside of the smoky dwelling room, and 
to ask for a bowl of milk there. It was brought me in a remark- 
ably clean wooden bowl, and I had some curiosity, when, clean 
or dirty, my milk was swallowed, to see where it came from. 
The man took me to a separate wooden building; and instead of 
the disgusting dirt and sluttishness I had expected, I found the 
most unpretending cleanliness in this rough milk room— nothing 
was in it but the wooden vessels belonging to the dairy ; but these 
were of unexceptionable nicety; and all those holding the milk 
were standing in a broad rill of water led from the neighbouring 
burn, and rippling through the centre of the room, and pre- 
vented by a little side sluice from running too full, and mingling 
with the milk. This burn running through gave a freshness 
and cleanliness to every article ; although the whole was of 
rude construction, and evidently for use, not show. The cows 
were stabled, I found, at some distance from the milk-house, 
that the effluvia of their breath and dung might not taint the 
milk. Cheese is almost the only agricultural product of Switzer- 
land that is exported ; and it is manufactured by these small 
22 



330 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

farmers certainly as well, with as much intelligence, cleanliness, 
and advantage as by large farmers. Grain the country must 
import; and the supply is principally from the east side of the 
lake of Constance. Wine is not produced in greater quantity than 
the country consumes. The Swiss cows are exported even to 
Russia, and to all parts of France and Germany ; but as Swiss 
pasturage, and Swiss care, and love for the cow are not export- 
able, these agricultural improvements generally fail. The Swiss 
cows are very handsome animals, and of great value. A fine 
cow will sell for 20/. sterling in Switzerland. Such a cow in 
England would bring the same price in any good market. In all 
this branch of husbandry, the small farming system is not in any 
respect behind the large farming system. In' corn husbandry, 
from the nature of the country, no very extensive tracts dedicated 
entirely to raising corn-crops are met with, except in the cantons 
of Bern, Thurgovia, and a few other localities. To judge of the 
agriculture of a country by the appearance of the crops on the 
ground, of the working stock, utensils, drainage, fencing, and 
attention to manure, and from the state of all farm buildings and 
accomodations, Switzerland stands very high even as a corn 
country well farmed. 

The peculiar feature in the condition of the Swiss population 
— the great charm of Switzerland, next to its natural scenery — 
is the/ air of well-being, the neatness, the sense of property im- 
printed on the people, thek dwellings, their plots of land. They 
have a kind of Robinson Crusoe industry about their houses 
and little properties ; they are perpetually building, repairing, 
altering, or improving something about their tenements. The 
spirit of the proprietor is not to be mistaken in all that one sees 
in Switzerland. Some cottages, for instance, are adorned with 
long texts from Scripture painted on or burnt into the wood in 
front over the door; others, especially in the Simmenthal and the 
Haslethal, with the pedigree of the builder and owner. These 
show sometimes that the property has been held for 200 years 
by the same family. The modern taste of the proprietor shows 
itself in new windows, or additions to the old original picturesque 
dwelling, which, with its immense projecting roof sheltering or 
shading all these successive little additions, looks like a hen sitting 
with a brood of chickens under her wings. The little spots of 
land, each close no bigger than a garden, show the same daily 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 331 

I 

care in the fencing, digging, weeding, and watering. The vine- 
yard luisbandry is altogether a garden cnltivation,in which manual 
labour, unassisted by animal power, scarcely even by the simplest 
mechanical contrivance, such as wheelbarrows, harrows, or other 
assisting implements to the basket, hoe, and spade, does every 
operation ; and this gives the character to all their husbandry ; 
hand-labour is applied to all crops, such as potatoes, Indian corn, 
and even common grain crops, more extensively, both in digging 
and cleaning the land, than with us. It is not uncommon to find 
agricultural villages without a horse ; and all cultivation done by 
hand, especially where the main article of husbandry is either 
dairy produce, or that of the vineyard, to eitlier of which horse 
work is unnecessary. I confess I do not like a vine-farm. The 
vineyard is but a garden. The hand-labour is incessant in all 
the different operations, and yet it is not, like the hand-labour in 
a garden, applied to but a few fruit trees, or plants, or beds with 
which you form a kind of acquaintance that ripens into friend- 
ship in the course of years. The vines are too many, and each 
too insignificant by itself for that kind of pleasure, and the land 
under vines being always under vines, you don't get intimate 
either with the acres or beds, as in corn and grass husbandry, nor 
with the individual plants, as in gardening. Then the eye has 
nothing agreeable to dwell upon in the dotty effect of a field of 
vines ; and the eaj misses the rural music of a farm — the crowing 
of the cock— the lowing of the cattle — the sound of the Hail. In 
sheep-farming, cattle-farming, horse-breeding, corn-farming, or- 
chard or kitchen-gardening, or flower-gardening, a man may be 
an amateur, may have a singular delight, a very craze— but I 
could never hear of any such feeling about vine-farming. It is, 
in spite of poetry, a dull manufacture. 

Two circumstances attending the great diffusion of laifdcd pro- 
perty among the people strike the traveller in Switzerland; one 
is the great perfection it gives to their social arrangements. I 
lodged in a little hamlet (Veytaux),so inconsiderable that it could 
not support a shop, nor a shoemaker, tailor, or tradesman living 
by his trade. I found, however, that there was a regular post- 
office in the place, although it was not a thoroughfare to other 
places; a regular watchman by night, calling the hours as in 
great towns; two public fountains, with regulations for keeping 
them clean painted on boards at the spouts; a kind of market- 



332 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

place, in which all the orders or edicts of the canton, or of the 
federal government were posted up under a wire covering, for the 
public information ; and a fire-engine in good order, and which 
occasionally was brought out, and the people exercised in its use. 
Towns of twenty or thirty times the population in Scotland and 
England have no such social arrangements. I am speaking of a 
hamlet of thirty, or at the outside forty houses. The other circum- 
stance which strikes the traveller is the condition and appearance 
of the female sex, as it is affected by the distribution of land 
among the labouring class. None of the women are exempt 
from field-work, not even in the families of very substantial peas- 
ant proprietors, whose houses are furnished as well as any coun- 
try manse with us. All work as regularly as the poorest male 
individual. The land, however, being their own, they have a 
choice of work, and the hard work is generally done by the men. 
The felling and bringing home wood for fuel, the mowing grass 
generally, but not always, the carrying out manure on their backs, 
the handling horses and cows, digging, and such heavy labour is 
man's work; the binding the vine to the pole with a straw, which 
is done three times in the course of its growth, the making the 
hay, the pruning the vine, twitching off the superfluous leaves 
and tendrils, — these lighter yet necessary jobs to be done about 
vineyards or orchards form the women's work. But females, 
both in France and Switzerland, appear to have a far more im- 
portant role in the family, among the lower and middle classes 
than with us. The female, although not exempt from out-door 
work, and even hard work, undertakes the thinking and manag- 
ing department in the family affairs, and the husband is but the 
executive officer. The female is, in fact, very remarkably superior 
in manners, habits, tact, and intelligence to the husband, in almost 
every family of the middle or lower classes in Switzerland. One 
is surprised to see the wife of such good, even genteel manners, 
and sound sense, and altogether such a superior person to her 
station ; and the husband very often a mere lout. The hen is 
the better bird all over Switzerland. This is, perhaps, an effect 
of the military or servile employment of a great proportion of 
the male population during youth, and of the mercenary spirit 
too prevalent in Switzerland. In France, also, the female takes 
her full share of business with the male part of the family, in 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 333 

keeping accounts and books and selling goods, and in both conn- 
tries occupies a higher and more rational social position certainly 
than with us. This seems to be the effect of the distribution of 
property, by which the female has her share and interest, as well 
as the male ; and grows up with the same personal interest and 
sense of property in all around her. 



CHAPTER XV. 

LYONS.— ON ITS MANUFACTURING SYSTEM. — NOTES ON AVIGNON. 
— FRENCH BARRACKS. — COOKERY. — ITS EFFECTS ON NATIONAL 
WEALTH. 

Lyons, with its narrow dark streets and lofty old houses on 
each side, resembles some of the old parts of the old town of 
Edinburgh. It is built at the confluence of the Rhone and Saone, 
upon a flat tongue of land, so narrow that the stranger is sur- 
prised, on taking the breadth of the city, to come so soon from 
the one river quay to the other ; and on taking its length in his 
walk, he can scarcely believe that this is the second city in France, 
a city nearly as populous as EdinbWgh. In 1831, it contained 
165,459 inhabitants; and Edinburgh in 1831 reckoned 178,371. 
But on looking more carefully, the traveller perceives that the 
secondary streets are remarkably narrow, the houses very lofty 
and densely inhabited, each a little town of people within itself, 
and, as in Edinburgh, a great proportion of the inhabitants lodge 
in the air, not on the surface of the earth. 

In this chief seat of the silk manufacture in France, and, at no 
distant period in Europe, the manufacturing arrangements are 
apparently ill adapted to the improvement, extension, or even the 
future existence of its trade, against the competition of England, 
Prussia, and Switzerland. The old leaven of the corporation 
system sticks to Lyons ; and the distress in which her operatives 
are so frequently plunged that their whole existence, it may be 
said, is distress, is very much the consequence of a faulty arrange- 
ment of business not suitable to the times. The master-manu- 
facturer has no factory and workmen constantly in his employ. 
He merely buys the raw material, and gives it out to be sorted, 
spun, dyed, and put in a state for the silk weaver. In these 
operations, which are not conducted in his own premises or 
factory, he has but very imperfect checks upon embezzlement, 
and none upon waste. The division of labour in a manufacture 
is not always economical. It is a very nice point, in practice, to 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 335 

judge of its applicability, and to adjust it to advantage. Cheap 
production may arise from a division of labour under one head 
or master-manufacturer ; but faulty processes, loss of time, and a 
waste of labour and means, may arise from a division among 
different sub-capitals, and independent operators, of such labour 
or operations as are essential for producing a good and cheap 
product. It requires great judgment to determine — happily 
self-interest is the surest guide — what may be left to others to 
prepare, and what the manufacturer must, from first to last, carry 
on himself In Lyons, in the silk trade, the laying or preparing 
the pattern for the loom is the work of independent workmen ; 
although the patterns are produced by a draughtsman, who is 
generally a partner with the master-manufacturer. The weavers 
again are independent workmen, also, living and working eacli in 
his^own shop, with two or three looms for different kinds of fabric, 
and with journey mem to work them. He lodges and boards the 
journeymen, finds the looms and the work, and gets one-half or 
one-third of their earnings, according to the regulations or customs 
of the craft, as established for the different stufis or fabrics. This 
master- weaver is paid for the work by the master-manufacturer 
so much per ell. This is the state of infancy in manufacturing 
operations with us — a happy infancy, but still a state of infancy 
in which capital has not been accumulated, or machinery in- 
vented, to enable the master-manufacturer to concentrate his 
operations. 

It is evident that the eye and superintendence of the master- 
manufacturer cannot be given to quality and economy, where every 
operation essential to the manufacture is not under one roof, or 
one guidance, with partners and managers attending it, and with 
workmen responsible directly to one head, and whose hands are 
always kept employed in the same kinds of work. When the 
web is done it is too late to check faulty workmansiiip, or save 
the character of the goods, by putting better workmen or better 
material to it. As long as the Continent had only Lyons, and 
England only her French colony in Spital fields, to look to for the 
greater part of their silk fabrics, the system went on ; but when 
Manchester, Paisley, and, on the Continent, Zurich, and other 
places, took up the silk trade upon dilfercnt manufacturing princi- 
ples, the superior economy and quality of their fabrics mined these 
old seats of the silk manufacture. England, about twelve years 



336 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

ago, was reckoned to haVe about 10,000 looms engaged in the 
silk manufacture, and is now reckoned to have about 80,000. 
Lyons and its neighbourhood has now but 31,000; and Zurich 
and its neighbourhood is reckoned to have above 20,000. In all 
that regards the preparation of the silk, and the texture and quality 
of the stuffs, the English excel the French manufactures, and in 
economy so decidedly, that the ell of silk stuff which cannot be 
produced at Lyons under the cost for labour of 120 to 125 cent- 
imes, costs in labour only 40 centimes in England. A certain 
number of privileged workmen are alone entitled to set up as 
masters in the weaving and other branches of the silk manufacture 
at Lyons, and are entitled to exclude others from the exercise of 
their trade. They must have served as apprentices and as jour- 
neymen for certain periods, and cannot set up for themselves with- 
out large fees of entry for the freedom of the craft, be the demand 
for looms ever so great. The French Revolution gave political 
liberty only to the people — the forms of constitutional government 
— but gave them no civil liberty, nor to this day is civil liberty, 
or the perfect freedom of every citizen to act for himself without 
interference, understood or thought of by the French people any 
more than before the Revolution. The municipal taxes on the 
transit of goods through towns, the leave and license necessary to 
carry industry from one locality to another, and the restraints upon 
its free exercise, as here in silk weaving, are in full vigour. The 
only argument in favour of this system of corporate privileges is, 
that it allows the small capitalist as well as the large to live, and 
this is not an argument to be despised in social economy. The 
weaver with his two or three looms has an independent existence; 
and, however inefficient as a producer of silk fabrics at the cheap- 
est rate compared to th6 master-manufacturer, who has a couple of 
hundred looms perhaps at work under his eye, with all that pre- 
cedes and follows the weaving going on simultaneously, he is one 
of a body far more valuable in social relation than the two or three 
great capitalists who supersede this body of middle class manu- 
facturers. But this is, unhappily, the natural and unavoidable 
progress of manufacturing industry. Large capital, when it comes 
into competition with small capital in the world's wide market, 
inevitably drives the small out of the field. An aristocracy of 
large capitalists obtains the possession, the property it may be 
called, of supplying all human wants, and holds it by the best of 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 337 

all tenures — that of being able to supply mankind cheapest. It 
is a manufacturing and physical good, but a social and moral evil. 
The actual operative in Great Britain has no prospect before him. 
He may save a few hundred pounds by unceasing industry and 
sobriety ; but why should he save it ? This little saved capital — 
call it thousands instead of hundreds of pounds sterling— can do 
nothing in the present state of our trade and manufactures, in 
competition with the vast capitals accumulated by long inheritance, 
pre-occupying every branch of industry and manufacture, and 
producing far cheaper than he can do with bis trilling means. 
Land, by the effect of the corn laws, and of the privilege accorded 
to that kind of property, is out of his reach as much as trade and 
manufacture ; there being no small estates in Britain, generally 
speaking, which a labouring or middle class man could purchase 
and sit down upon with his family to live as a working yeoman, 
or peasant proprietor ; small capitals, when they are accumulate^, 
are forced into trade and manufacture, although every branch is 
over-supplied with the means of producing. What can a man 
turn to who has a little capital of three or four thousand pounds ? 
What can he enter into with any reasonable prospect of not losing 
his little capital in his most honest and prudent efforts ? And 
what can the working man do but spend his earnings, drink, and 
fall into a reckless improvident way of living, when he sees clearly 
that every avenue to an independent condition is, by the power 
of great capital, shut against liim ? A vassalage in manufacture 
and trade is succeeding the vassalage in land, and the serf of the 
loom is in a lower and more helpless condition than the se;-f of the 
glebe ; because his condition appears to be not merely the effect 
of an artificial and faulty social economy, like the feudal, which 
may be remedied, but to be the unavoidable effect of natural 
causes. Mankind will naturally prefer the best and cheapest 
goods. Great capitals will naturally produce better and cheaper 
than small capitals applied to the same objects. Corporations, 
trade restrictions, privileges either of masters or workmen, and all 
such local or partial legislation, add to instead of curing the evil, 
for they can only reach the producers, not the consumers ; and 
few, indeed, are the branches of industry, in which the producers 
have a command of the market. The feudalization going on in 
our manufacturing social economy is very conspicuous in some of 
the great cotton factories. The master-manufacturer in some 



338 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

districts, who employs eight hundred or a thousand hands, deals 
in reality only with fifty or sixty sub-vassals or operative cotton 
spinners, as they are technically called, who undertake the work- 
ing of so many looms, or spinning jennies. They hire and pay 
the men, women, and children, who are the real operatives, grind- 
ing their wages down to the lowest rate, and getting the highest 
they can out of the master-manufacturer. A strike is often the 
operation of these middle men, and productive of little benefit to, 
and even against the will of the actual workmen. They are, in 
the little imperium of the factory, the equivalent to the feudal 
barons. 

In a few branches of the silk trade, in the elegance^of pattern, 
and in some few dyes, the Lyons manufacturer still has a pre-emi- 
nence. The draughtsman and dyer are educated in the branches 
of science and fine art connected with their trade. Science and 
good taste in colours and patterns are more diffused in France by 
education, social habits, and cultivation even among the working 
class, than among our middle class. In every departmental town, 
a public school of design for the working class, and exhibitions of 
models, and objects coimected with the cultivation of taste, are 
established. Elegance, and variety of fashion in patterns, can, it 
is probable, never be overtaken by machinery, or by the class of 
workmen who are but parts in a machine, so well as by the 
manual labour of independent workmen of taste and skill under 
the French system. In the figured stuffs in which hand-labour 
is not and cannot be superseded by machinery on account of the 
changeable and short-lived fashion, the French workmen excel 
ours, and can work 25 per cent, cheaper. Fashion is too evanes- 
cent and variable to be followed up closely by machinery ; and 
our corn laws, and other taxes affecting labour, turn the balance 
against us, where hand-labour is in competition with hand-labour. 
It is, however, a remarkable sign of the times, that what is called 
fashion in colours, patterns, and materials of dress, appears to be 
growing less changeable and fantastic as the world grows older. 
As the body of the middle and lower classes, and not merely the 
court and highest class, become consumers, and regulate the mar- 
ket, good taste, or taste with reference to the useful in its require- 
ments, becomes more prevalent, and its application more steady. 
One no where sees now, as fifty years ago, except, it may be, in 
remote little German towns, sky-blue, or pink, or green, or pom- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 339 

padour coats, or people walking the streets in silk stockings, silk 
breeches, and powdered hair. The taste of the middle class, the 
mass of the consumers, has invaded the empire of fashion, and, 
in fact, sets the Aishion to the higher classes ; and the nobleman 
now would be laughed at, who appeared in any other shape, 
colour or material of clothing, than the well-dressed tradesman. 
Exclusiveness, the soul of fashion, cannot exist in the present 
cheap, extensive production of clothing material. This greater 
steadiness of fashion with the great mass of the consumers of 
cloth, cotton, and silk, and the longer endurance, and greater 
extension of the demand for any fashion that once gets estab- 
lished, enable machinery and large capital to work even upon 
objects which would have been left formerly to hand-work ; and 
the field for hand-loom weavers is narrowed to the production of 
a few fancy articles. The hand-loom weavers in the silk trade in 
Lyons appear to have been for the last hundred years in no supe- 
rior or more prosperous condition than those in Spitalfields. 

As far back as 1740, it appears by a petition to the local autho- 
rities at Lyons for raising the rates of weaving the ell of silk stuff, 
that the earnings of a master-weaver with three looms in full 
work all the year fell short of the necessary expense of a family 
living in the poorest way. The statement of the hand-loom 
weavers reckons 296 working days (52 Sundays, 17 holidays, and 
6 days of military town guard duty, being deducted), and reckons 
800 ells a year the production of each loom. Bread is taken at 
2 sous per lb., and 10 'lbs. as the daily allowance of a man, his 
wife, two children, and a journeyman. • Meat is taken at 6 sous, 
and 2.i lbs. daily for such a family, and wine 1 pint, at 6 sous; 
and to meet this condition of subsistence with such a family in 
full work, the earnings are shown to be deficient. How then has 
this class of operatives existed through a century? By going 
down lower in the scale of subsistence, in the enjoyment of the 
comforts and necessaries of life. It is impossible to foresee how 
low the condition of many masses of population may be reduced 
in the working manufacturing classes. It has no minimum of 
depression, as there appears to be in the condition of the working 
agricultural class. The reproduction of the husbandman's food, 
and of seed for the following crop, is the point below which the 
condition of the labouring husbandman cannot permanently fall. 
Population and cultivation stop at that point ; and ovcr-i)roduclion 



340 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

is a good, not an evil, where the producers are themselves the 
principal consumers. In manufacturing industry there is no such 
defined terminus. Labour and production go on, whether food 
and cost are reproduced by the operatives or not; and over-pro- 
duction is followed by famine to them. The very prosperity of 
one great body reduces another great body to want in manufac- 
turing industry. One would almost think there is a balance point 
in social well-being, which society has already reached, and that 
now the higher one end is mounting, the lower the other end is 
descending. Although the peculiar manufacture of Lyons, the 
silk weaving, is declining, the country around Lyons is flourish- 
ing. Building, repairing, whitewashing, are going on briskly in 
the villages. New cotton or flax factories, iron-works, andsteam- 
engine chimneys are rising along the river side. Steamboats, rail- 
roads from coal works and quarries, river craft carrying goods, 
iron suspension-bridges across the stream, are far more numerous 
on the Rhone than on the Rhine — bustle and business far more 
advanced. Industry, in spite of the trammels on its free develop- 
ment, is on the move in this part of France, although its objects 
are changing from the manufacturing of one single article of 
luxury, silk, to the production of a great variety of useful articles, 
for which the command of coal and water carriage in this district 
gives peculiar facilities. This will be a great manufacturing dis- 
trict, and only wants civil liberty to be so : it surpasses already, 
in the activity on the waters, and in the numbers of new factories, 
and manufacturing villages, and establishments on their banks, 
the German manufacturing districts on the Rhine. Here they are 
doing, — there they are but dreaming of doing. 

The ancient palace of the popes at Avignon is now converted 
into a barrack for infantry. The popes resided at Avignon full 
73 years, from 1 303 to 1 376. There is nothing remaining of those 
times, but the outward shell of the buildings, and the names of 
the different chambers — the chamber of inquisition, the chamber 
of torture, the chamber of execution, and among the inhabitants 
of the town and neighbourhood, it is said a tendency to favour 
despotism, fanaticism, and legitimacy in royal rights. The cham- 
bers in the old papal residence, so agreeably handed down to pos- 
terity by their religious uses, and in which the names of victims 
are said to be still legible on the plaster of the walls, subject to 
the doubt if writing was so ordinary an accomplishment in the 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 341 

fourteenth century — were washed in blood at the Revolution. 
The crimes and sufferings spread over a century were surpassed 
in a day. And now these chambers of blood resound with the 
careless laugh and merry vaudeville of the young soldiery. A 
French barrack is worth seeing. The beds appear particularly- 
good. Each private had a bed to himself on an iron bedstead. 
In our service, two and even three men are laid in one bed. The 
French peasantry, even in the lowest condition, are accustomed to 
good beds. A high pile of bedding seems a kind of ornamental 
furniture indispensably necessary in their ideas of housekeeping ; 
and you see even in the single-room households of the poor, a 
kind of display in the neatness and quantity of bedding. This 
taste has probably spread so widely as to act upon the military- 
accommodation. Each bed had a brown cloth covering, neatly- 
covering the bed-clothes, and the sheets and matresses were as 
clean and nicely done up as in any hospital. In this barrack it 
struck me as characteristic of the good relation between the officers 
and men, that on the inside of the door was stuck up a notice, 
that it would not be reputable to be seen in certain streets men- 
tioned, on account of houses of ill-fame in them. 

A great quantity of very good wit, which might have served 
the owners for any of their lawful occasions, was expended some 
year ago upon the subject of cookery. The French began with 
their Science Gastronomique, their Almanacs des Gourmands, 
their saucepans and gridirons of honour, and a thousand equally 
witty sayings and doings. Our manufacturers of roast and boiled, 
and printed paper, our Kitcheners, Udes, and Glasses, were not 
behind, and mixed up their flour and melted butter with wit and 
philosophy as well as their neighbours. The subject is not quite 
so ridiculous as it has been made. The food of a people, and its 
preparation, are closely connected with their industry and civili- 
zation. The female half of the human species do little other work 
in most communities but cook : and much more than half of all 
the work of the other moiety is applied to the direct production of 
l!ie materials for cooking. The least observant and least hungry 
of travellers abroad is struck with admiration at the readiness with 
which a dinner of eight or ten dishes of various eatables makes 
its appearance in foreign inns, and remembers with no patriotic 
feeling the never-ready perpetual mutton-chop and mashed pota- 
toes of the English road. Yet much of our national prosperity 



342 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

and wealth, much of the capital and productiveness of our labour- 
ing and middle classes, and especially of the industrious who are 
in a state of transition from tiie one class to the other, may be as- 
cribed to the greater simplicity and frugality of diet among us : 
and particularly to the great saving of time and labour in its pre- 
paration. A working man, tradesman, or man in the labouring 
or middle class in ordinary employment, sits down abroad to a 
much better dinner than a man of good realized capital and in a 
thriving way, with us. The three or four well-dressed dishes, 
principally of legumes or other cheap materials, cost the foreigner 
less perhaps in money than the bread and cheese, or simply-cooked 
mutton and potatoes of the English dinner of the man of the same 
class. This is the main economical advantage, indeed, which 
absentee families promise themselves from settling abroad. It is 
to them, no doubt, an advantage. They eat and drink more 
sumptuously than they could at home for the same money. But 
this way of living is of great social disadvantage to the people 
among whom it is habitual. Its cheapness is but a delusion. The 
political economist will differ widely from the traveller, in his 
opinion of its superiority. It costs a vast deal more time and 
labour to bring all this finely-cooked food together : it costs, at 
the least, twice as much of human time and labour to dine five 
millions of French or German people, as to dine five millions of 
English ; and time and labour, be it remembered, are the basis of 
all national wealth and prosperity. Time and labour employed 
unreproductively are capital thrown away. The meals of the 
Englishman and of the continental man end equally in satiating 
appetite, and recruiting strength. If this end be attained in Eng- 
land by an hour's work of one person in a family of five, in the 
ordinary station of life of our working and middle class, cooking 
generally but a single meal in the day in the simplest way, and 
on the Continent, owing to the general habit of living, the more 
complicated forms of cookery, and the more frequent meals, if the 
cooking for such a family occupies one of its members the whole 
day, the English family evidently has saved most capital, or th^t 
from which alone capital is produced — time and labour — in a 
given period. The loss of time in the eating and preparation of 
food, the numerous meals, dishes, and modes of cookery, form a 
very important drawback on the prosperity of families on the 
Continent in that station in which, with us, very little time, indeed, 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 343 

is expended in feating or cooking. It is an important dinriinution 
of the means of national wealth. Gournmndize is found also to 
be a vice as troublesome to deal with among the French soldiery 
as tippling among ours. The craving for variety of food and 
cookery leads to most of the irregularities and depredations in the 
field, of which the French armies are accused. The variety in 
food, and in its complicated preparation, which is so blended with 
the habits of living on the Continent that even the peor have the 
craving for it, appears by no means necessary or conducive to 
health. A remarkably smaller proportion of the labouring and 
middle classes abroad are healthy-looking individuals with bloom- 
ing looks, pure teeth, and all external indications of vigorous 
animal condition, than in our more simply fed population. It is 
evidently such a drawback on the acquiring of capital in the 
lower stations of life, that the want of a middle class of capitalists 
— of men who rise by industry and frugality from common labour 
to a wider circle of business— is very much to be ascribed to this 
habitual waste of time and labour in their family living and house- 
keeping. They spend in immediate gratification the beginnings 
of a working capital. The national wealth and prosperity is ma- 
terially affected by this cause, trifling and ridiculous as it appears 
to be in stating it in a single case. In the total, however, it is 
fully a fifth of the time and labour of a continental population, 
that is daily wasted in cookery and eating. 



CHAPTER XVr. 

HOTES ON GENOA.— POOR OF GENOA— CAUSES OF THE DECLINE OF 
GENOA. 

Genoa — Genoa the superb ! I first set my foot on Italian 
land on the mole of Genoa. Who does not picture to himself, on 
approaching the mole of Genoa, the grand days of this once 
powerful republic — her doges, her Doria, and all her magnificent 
aristocracy stepping in splendid array on board of gallant fleets 
that carried her dominion over the realms of the East ? How 
unromantic is reality ! The moles of Genoa, as works of mag- 
nificence and art, are but shabby quays, not to be named on the 
same day with the quays of Leith, Dundee, Aberdeen, or dozens 
of our third-rate shipping towns on the British coast. I see in 
Genoa only a town of eighty thousand inhabitants, covering 
about as much ground as Aberdeen, built at the foot and on the 
slopes of some rocky barren knolls of about the same elevation, 
and as bare as the upper half of Arthur's Seat near Edinburgh, 
and which surround a bight of the coast, called by courtesy a 
bay, of about the size of one of the larger wet docks of Liverpool, 
at the bottom of a gulf of the Mediterranean. This bight is 
made a tolerably secure port by two piers or moles dividing it 
into an outer and inner harbour : the latter for small craft, and 
containing a good many of them, and the other for larger vessels, 
of which, that is of brigs and traders to foreign parts, there might 
be a score or more — a show of masts certainly inferior to what 
we see daily in our third-rate ports, such as Dundee, Aberdeen, 
or Leith. This is, next to Leghorn, the greatest commercial port 
on this side of Italy — one of the main mouths of the export and 
import of a population equal to that of Great Britain — so that the 
poor muster of sea-going vessels in it surprises the traveller. . 

The streets of Genoa are in general so narrow that tw^ ladies 
in the huge sleeves lately in fashion would certainly stick if they 
met each other. They are all paved with flat stones of a foot or 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 345 

two square, laid diagonally, and with an open channel in the 
middle of the alley for the run of water. Climate is a better 
scavenger than the dean of guild, or dirt-baillie of our ancient 
Scotch burghs. These narrow wynds and closes of Genoa are 
not dirty, and from the constant draught of air through such nar- 
row funnels, are sweet and cool in hot weather. The buildings 
on each side of these narrow alleys are palaces— lofty, magnifi- 
cent, extensive palaces rising to the skies, excluding heat and even 
light from the two-legged insects dressed in brown woollen cloaks 
crawling between theiYi. 

Here in Genoa, the imaginative traveller may revel in his de- 
scriptions of orange groves, vine-clad hills, and marble palaces, 
mingled in luxuriant magnificence, and rising against a background 
of heaven-high peaks of snow cutting into a deep blue sky above, 
and washed beneath by a sea still more intensely blue. But that 
miserable proseman, the political economist, goes dodging about 
this magnificent city, the city of palaces, the Genova la Superba, 
asking. Where do your middle classes live ? Where did they live 
in the days of Genoa's greatness? He sees now that the same 
roof covers the beggar and the prince ; for, on the ground-floors, 
under the marble staircases, and marble-paved halls, and superb 
state rooms on the first floor, there are vaults, holes, and coach- 
house-like places opening into the streets, in which the labouring 
class and small shopkeepers pig together, living, cooking, and 
doing all family work half and half in the open air. But was this 
always so ? Where did, or where do they live, who are neither 
princes nor beggars? who are a degree above porters, or day 
labourers, or the small shopkeeper or tradesman living by their 
custom, in the means and habits of a civilized existence ? Where 
be the snug, comfortable, suitable dwellings for this middle class, 
the pith and marrow of a nation, which cover the land in England 
and Scotland so entirely that the great mansion is the exception, 
not the rule, in our national iiabitations, wealthy as the nation is? 
Here, all is palace, and all is noblesse, public functionary, and 
beggar. They reckon in Genoa, in clerical function alone, 6,000 
persons, and 7,000 military. Sweep away the edifices of nobility, 
those appropriated to public functionaries and their business, to- 
gether with churches, convents, hospitals, barracks, theatres, and 
such public buildings, and Genoa would scarcely be a town. Yet 
23 



346 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

Genoa is not a poor town in one sense. Many of these palaces 
are inhabited by a wealthy nobiUty, and, it is said, there are 
more capitalists, more great capitalists in Genoa, than in any 
town in Italy. To have erected, and to keep up such palaces as 
they live in, or even to afford so much dead stock as is invested 
in the mere material, the marble, gilding, pictures of value, orna- 
ments, and costly furniture, speaks of enormous wealth, both in 
past and present days. Some traveller tells us, that the Italian 
noble will go on building and building at a family palace from 
generation to generation, living in the meantime in a corner of 
it, or in a garret, poorly and shabbily. This is certainly not the 
case here. 1 underwent the usual sight-seeing penance of the 
traveller, and was trotted by a valet-de-place through sundry 
magnificent palaces — the Palavicini, the Brignoli, the Durazzi, and 
others. These appeared to me as complete in furniture, establish- 
ment of servants, and all the magnificence of life, as any noble- 
man's mansion in any country. In one palace, for instance, as 
we entered the hall in the morning about 9 o'clock, the chaplain 
of the family was going into the drawing-room to read family 
prayers, the servants went in after him, a goodly number neatly 
dressed, just as in any orderly English family of high rank, and 
we were asked to wait in an adjoining room, until the service 
was over and the family had retired to the breakfast-room, in 
order to show us some paintings of note in the grand drawing- 
room. It v/as more interesting than the pictures to see this magni- 
ficent apartment, although gilded, curtained, chandeliered, and 
ornamented with a costliness suitable for the residence of a crowned 
head, yet comfortably as well as splendidly furnished, with a carpet 
fully covering the floor,a blazing fire in the chimney, tables covered 
with books, ladies' Avork in baskets and work-bags, scattered about 
the room, and with a home look of daily use and domestic enjoj^- 
ment about everything, which resembled the taste of English life. 
Many of the old wealthy mercantile nobility have apparently fallen 
from their high estate, and, in the course of ages, have been ex- 
tinguished, or become impoverished; for vast edifices — in fact, • 
costly palaces — are occupied by innkeepers and others, who could 
never have built them for the uses they are now put to : but evi- 
dently a class of very great capitalists remains. They, with a 
very great body of destitute people, and the military, civil func- 
tionaries, clergy, and the small dealers and tradesmen living by 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 347 

their expenditure, now constitute the population of this once 
powerful republic. 

May not the history of Genoa's connmercial greatness and de- 
cline become, in the course of ages, that of England's? May 
not the one show in small, what the other will come to in large? 
Is not the same element of decay common to the social economy 
of both ? It is in the nature of trade and manufacture, that great 
capital drives small capital out of the field ; it can afford to work 
for smaller returns. There is a natural tendency in trade to mo- 
nopoly, by the accumulation of great wealth in few hands. It 
is not impossible that in every branch of trade and manufacture 
in Britain, the great capitalist will, in time, entirely occupy the 
field, and put down small capitalists in the same lines of busi- 
ness; that a moneyed aristocracy, similar to that here in Genoa, 
will gradually be formed, the middle class of small capitalists in 
trade and manufacture become gradually extinguished, and a 
structure of society gradually arise, in which lords and labourers 
will be the only classes or gradations in the commercial and 
manufacturing, as in the landed system. An approximation, a 
tendency towards this state, is going on in England. In many 
branches of industry, — for instance, in glass-making, iron-found- 
ing, soap -making, cotton-spinning, — the great capitalists engaged 
in them have, by the natural effect of working with great capital, 
driven small capitals out of the field, and formed a kind of ex- 
clusive family property of some of these branches of manufacture. 
Government, by excessive taxation and excise regulation, both 
of which have ultimately the effect, as in the glass and soap ma- 
nufacture and distillery business, of giving a monopoly to the 
great capitalist who can afford the delay and advance of money 
these impediments require, has been hitherto aiding, rather than 
counteracting, this tendency of great capital to swallow all the 
employments in which small capital can act. It is a question 
practically undetermined, whether the experiment into which 
this tendency has forced society within these few years, the junc- 
tion of small capitalists in joint-stock, subscription, or share com- 
panies, can compete in productive industry with great capital in 
the hands of one or two partners wielding great means with the 
energy, activity, and frugality of an individual. It is not an ima- 
ginary, nor perhaps a very distant evil, that our middle classes 
with their small capitals may sink into nothing, may become, as 



348 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

here, tradesmen or small dealers supplying a few great manufac- 
turing and commercial families with the articles of their house- 
hold consumpt, or supernumerary candidates for unnecessary 
public functions, civil, military, or clerical ; and that in trade, as 
in land, a noblesse of capitalists, and a population of serfs work- 
ing for them, may come to be the two main constituent parts in 
our social structure. ' A Genoa in large England may possibly 
become — with one small class living in almost royal splendour 
and luxury ; and the freat mass of the community in rags and 
hunger. 

I went to see the poor-house in Genoa, a vast ancient palace, 
in which about 1800 poor are kept upon the principle of making 
them work for their living. Work, or material of various kinds 
suited to the trade or ability of the pauper, is given out to each, 
and, when finished, it is sold or valued, the cost of the material 
and of the rations of food or other necessaries supplied to the 
pauper while producing it, deducted, and the balance paid to him 
in money. Rational as this principle of relief appears to be, I 
am in doubt whether it answers well, or rather in no doubt that 
it answers ill. In the small population of a town the effects may 
be more distinctly traced than in an extensive national system 
upon the same principle ; but the effects must be the same. The 
kinds of employment given to the pauper are necessarily those 
which the poor usually live by, and which require few, and not 
expensive tools, and are easily acquired and exercised ; such as 
coarse weaving, rope-making, ordinary joiner-work, shoemaking, 
tailoring of slop clothes, &c. Among 80,000 people in a town, 
the work of 1800 working in a poor-house, or as out-door pau- 
pers, at the common trades of the poorer class, displaces exactly 
so much of the work of the latter, makes them poorer — is robbing 
Peter to pay Paul. The poor artisan whose market is anticipated 
and overstocked by a forced production from the poor-house, and 
at a cheaper rate than he who has to buy the material by retail can 
afford to produce the article, must go to the poor-house himself. 
This is clearly the effect, in the great as in the small, of applying 
public or subscribed capital to pauperism, in a way that interferes 
with any branch of industry in which the poor usually employ their 
own time and labour to keep them out of pauperism. If this 
be true, the only kind of industry which is suitable either for 
pauper or penal employment in a community, is that which inter- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 349 

feres with the means of living of no other class in the community : 
and that is only labour applied to the direct production of the pau- 
per or penal labourer's own food and necessaries, as in the poor 
colonies in Holland, either in husbandry, fisiiery, or work con- 
nected with what they themselves consume. 

When we reflect on the former greatness and the present decay 
of this once powerful state, how important the lesson it teaches ! 
not the common-place lesson only of the instability of human 
greatness — but that the misapplication of capital, or rather of 
human industry — for capital is the command of human labour 
and time, embodied in the form of money — is the cause of the 
instability of greatness in empires as in individuals. Look at this 
city of Genoa! at the millions upon millions that have been ex- 
pended unreproductively ! The loom, the ship, the steam-engine, 
the factory, reproduce their own cost with a profit, and the whole 
is laid out, again and again, and to the latest generation, repro- 
ductively; but the palace, the gorgeous ornament, the pageant, 
the display of pomp and power in fleets and armies and courtly 
splendour, reproduce nothing. The labourer earns his needful 
food during the time he is employed in producing them; that 
done, he is no richer than at first, and the means of his employer 
to re-employ him, the capital which, laid out in a reproductive 
way, would have gone on to all posterity, augmenting and ex- 
tending employment, well-being, and civilization, is fixed down, 
and buried in a pile of stones. The labourers of the day earned 
their wages for piling them together, consumed and paid for their 
meat and drink during the time, and that is all the result of the 
outlay of capital, which, if the Genoese nobles had employed it 
reproductively in manufacturing or transporting the objects of 
civilized life for the consumers instead of in building huge palaces, 
would have vivified the East. Capital is a bank-note for so much 
human labour. If its value is not reproduced by its outlay, the 
holder of it is wasting his means, and the industrious of the coun- 
try suffer a loss. 

I mourn not for Genoa. Distant countries conquered, plun- 
dered, oppressed, reduced to subjection and barbarism, to enable 
a wealthy and ostentatious aristocracy to vie with each other in 
splendid extravagance — the middle class extinguished — the useful 
arts and manufactures, those which diffuse comfort and civiliza- 
tion through society, and extend by their productive action the 



350 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

sphere of human industry, postponed to the ornamental, to those 
which administer only to the kixurious enjoyment of the few, 
and add httle or nothing to the means of Hving, well-being, and 
industry of the many — in the downfall of such a state — of a peo- 
ple of princes and beggars — what is there to regret? Lord Cas- 
tlereagh need not turn him in his grave, if the annihilation of the 
Genoese aristocracy as a state be the greatest of his diplomatic sins. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

NOTES ON NAPLES — SCENERY. — VESUVIUS.— POMPEII. — NEAPOLITAN 
PEOPLE.— CAUSES OF THEIR LOW CONDITION. 

The Bay of Naples will not disappoint the expectation of the 
most imaginative of the tribe of wanderers. Distant raonntain, 
peaks tipped with snow rising in the clear intensely blue sky, are 
encircled by the deep green forests, below which bright pasture 
and grass fields join to a rich network over the face of the country 
of vineyards, orchards, olive and orange groves, hamlets, towns, 
villas, terraces, white walls, and a dazzling confusion of the 
works of nature and of man. This splendid hill-skirting termi- 
nates in sea-cliffs, some black, some yellow, some bare, some 
bending over the waves under the tangled luxuriance of southern 
vegetation. High over all, the graceful outline of Vesuvius loses 
itself in the column of smoke«which rises, and spreads in the 
heavens, concentrating the innumerable details of the vast scene 
into one harmonious glorious whole. But this magnificence of 
nature must be seen : it cannot be described. It is seen to most 
advantage from the sea. On shore you want a suitable fore- 
ground. You are shut in between white walls on a dusty road, 
or stand upon terraces with vineyards and orchards, row behind 
row, all around you; and although these may please at a great 
distance, they have but a patchy, dotty cfl'ect near the eye, as the 
foreground of scenery. The poet-painter would scarcely select 
such objects for the foreground of his landscape. They are too 
artificial. The great clearness of the Italian atmosphere, the 
absence of mist, vapour, or exhalation partially hiding, partially 
showing distant objects, and thus giving the mind play upon 
them, is also against the picturesque efloct of this scenery in 
general. All is distinctly seen. There is no delusion, or rather 
there is the delusion that distances appear smaller, and elevations 
lower than they actually arc. In our northern scenery, from the 



352 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

vapour in the atmosphere, the refraction of the rays from a dis- 
tant mountain makes it visually, and to the sense of sight posi- 
tively, higher than the actual measurement confirms : and where 
mist and cloud partially hide the mountain, there is a mental 
refraction magnifying the unseen, as well as a visual refraction 
enlarging the seen. It is this difference of the medium through 
which a country is viewed, and which in our cloudy atmosphere 
brings our own imaginations to act on objects of mountain scene- 
ry, that makes the traveller from the north doubt whether the 
mountains he sees so clearly and minutely in the south are really 
so much higher than those he has been accustomed to see half 
hid in mist and vapour. 

Vesuvius is an isolated mountain about three miles from the 
sea, of an elevation of 3,792 feet. An American would call it an 
elegant mountain, and no English word can better express its 
character, so graceful are the flowing outlines of its slopes from 
the base to the summit, on every side. Vesuvius has been pro- 
digiously higher than it now is, for the Monte Somma, a peak 
about 800 yards north of the present cone, and Ottaiana on the 
south, are apparently peaks remaining of the circumference of the 
base of some vast ancient cone. These three remaining peaks, 
of which Monte Somma is the highest, belong to one mountain- 
base, although divided above by chasms of the vast extinct crater, 
and, by ravines below, and the whole mountain-mass is a single 
independent elevation on a vast plain, and unconnected with the 
Apennines, To ascend Vesuvius is no very difficult feat. The 
stranger is beset with guides waiting at Portici with their mules 
and asses, and, like watermen at the Tower stairs, clamorous 
for a fare, and so violent in their gesticulations, that the traveller 
might suppose they were going to roast him at the volcano, and 
were quarreling about their shares of the meat. But it is the 
custom of these people to scream at the top of their voices in 
ordinary conversation, and to use their hands and arms, as well 
as their tongues, as explanatory organs. In fact no guide is ne- 
cessary, there being a regular foot-path, and the shape of the 
ground, to lead any one accustomed to hills, and the foot-path is 
well frequented at all hours. You ride up to the hermitage, a 
house of two stories high like an old Highland manse, about half 
way up, or about an hour and a quarter's walk from the beginning 
of the ascent. It is situated on the dividing ridge between the 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 353 

ravine through which the lava of the ancient crater of Monte 
Somma has flowed, and that through which the lava of the pre- 
sent crater, in its recent eruptions, has partly taken its course. It 
is a ridge formed apparently by the deposition of stones and ashes 
from the volcano, upon a natural feature of the ground rock of 
the mountain. The hermitage is at the end of the cultivated 
ground on the side of Vesuvius. Above it, all is lava or scoriae, 
and some of this rubbish was still so hot that lava ejected eight 
months before ignited dry leaves thrust into its crevices. At this 
hermitage you may get hermit's fare for your money, a bottle of 
good wine and an omelette : and ladies are carried to the summit 
from hence in about an hour and a half, in a sort of sedan-chair, 
with about as much fatigue and danger, as in being sedanned on 
a frosty night from the lowest to the highest of the fashionable 
streets of the city of Bath. 

Is there any reason for supposing that the fire-seat, the focus 
of this volcano, is situated far below the level of the plain on 
which the mountain stands, and is not contained altogether, or 
principally, within the walls of the mountain itself? Travellers 
and geologists are very apt to run poetical, when they fall in with 
burning mountains. They tell us that this and the other great 
volcanoes of the world are vents of a great central fire in the 
interior of our globe. How does this vast central fire burn with- 
out known communications with atmospheric air or water ? At 
what depth below the crust of the earth is it in activity ? In the 
last eruption of Vesuvius in 1S39, the elevation in the air to 
which luminous matter, stones or ashes were thrown, was esti- 
mated or guessed by intelligent observers to be about one half of 
the apparent height of the mountain. In the great eruption of 
the 8th of August, 1779, the height of the column of flame, or 
ignited matter, was estimated at one and a half the height of the 
mountain, or 1800 yards : and Sir William Hamilton even reckons 
it to have been 3,600 yards, or above two miles high. Stones, as 
large as hogsheads, are stated by the Abbe de la Torre to have 
been projected to the elevation of 400 yards. In 1775, a mass of 
lava of 120 cubic feet is stated by De Bottis to have been pro- 
jected to an elevation from which he reckoned the descent to have 
occupied nine seconds of time. This fact would also give an 
elevation of about 400 yards. Now the projecting force cannot 
have been working at any immense distance below, such as the 



354 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

semi-diameter of the earth, nor at any considerable portion of it, 
because gravity and atmospheric resistance would oppose the 
elevation of huge masses of stone through such a space. No 
solid masses of matter, such as stones, rocks, lava, could be pro- 
jected entire and compact, against the column of air through such 
a distance ; but would come to the surface of the earth from such 
a depth, be the crust over this central focus ever so thin, in a liquid 
or gaseous state. The points of ejection, also, the vents of a cen- 
tral fire action, would naturally be always and invariably in the 
points of least resistance ; that is, in the lowest plains, not in the 
points of greatest resistance, the summits of high and weighty 
mountains resting on the plains. The prodigious power of vol- 
canic agency on and above the surface of the earth, is the strongest 
proof that the focus of that power is at no immense distance be- 
low its visible energy. The supposed communications between 
Vesuvius and Etna, Stromboli, Hecla, or even the Solfaterra, are 
not supported by historical facts of any correspondence between 
their eruptions. The communication even of this volcanic focus 
with the sea, at three miles' distance, is very doubtful, and rests 
only upon the ejection of torrents of water in one or two of the 
recorded eruptions : but besides the explanation of rain-water 
accumulating in the hollow of the crater, and at one period form- 
ing in it a small pond or lake, the gases evolved in the combustion 
within the crater might, by their combination in the air, produce 
water. Water from the sea passing through such a focus of lire, 
would undoubtedly be ejected in a gaseous state. 

The most instructive appearance to the traveller who carries 
the ordinary smattering of geological theory with him is, that the 
ashes, cinders, dust, stones, whether, loose, or indurated and ce- 
mented by pressure, heat, or other causes, into tufa rock more 
or less compact — in short, all ejected matter from the volcano that 
is not ejected in a liquid state like lava, is deposited in a distinct 
order or stratification. The larger particles are in one regular bed, 
above which is another bed of finer, above that another and an- 
other of finer and finer particles, each bed lying with a certain 
character of regularity above the other, as in water depositions; 
and then comes another bed or layer of rougher, larger particles, 
and a similar gradation of finer regularly above it. Where the 
tufa rock is laid bare in section, as by the road leading to the her- 
mitage, and also in the rocks about Naples, and in the excavations 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. ' 355 

at Pompeii, this stratified tendency of the ejected matter is to be 
seen. When the matter— dust, ashes, fine particles, stones — is 
ejected, the densest falls first to the ground, is the first deposited 
from tire atmosphere, exactly as if water instead of air had been 
the medium in which the particles had been suspended.* Then 
follow bed after bed, each in succession, according to the size or 
gravity of its particles. A new ejection of the same eruption 
follows with the same succession from coarse to fine particles, 
deposited upon the former deposition. If this tendency to strati- 
fication in the ejected matter of volcanic agency be confirmed by 
more extensive observation, it would explain in a satisfactory 
way many puzzling geological appearances — such as tlie stratified 
formation of rocks composed of crystalline or chemically aggre- 
gated particles, the veins or bands of rough pebbles in old red 
sandstone, the stripes alternating in almost all rocks. If geologists 
exclude all regularity from volcanic agency, and confine stratifi- 
cation to aqueous deposition, how many deluges must they take 
to account for a striped pebble, or a sandstone with bands or beds 
running through it at every three or four inches, or lamcllated 
structure of any kind? And how would they account for the 
formation of gneiss with its character of regularity in the arrange- 
ment of its particles ? The striated arrangement of its constituent 
particles, and the lamellated structure and stratified formation of 
rock of crystalline or chemically aggregated particles, may all be 
explained without the clumsy supposition of some unknown fluid 
in which these particles were suspended, and from which they 
were mechanically deposited, by taking them as they naturally lie 
after being ejected by a volcano and deposited in succession ac- 
cording to their gravity, and supposing them welded or partly 
fused together by the continuance or renewal of the heat. The 
air as well as water has been a medium in forming the mechanically 
deposited stratified rocks, and it is instructive to sec, from what 
goes on at eruptions of this volcano, that many appearances 

* Goethe in his observations, dated Cth Marcli, 1787, on Vesusiiis in a stale 
of eruption, says, that the heavy pieces of rock fell first and rolled down the 
cone with a deadening noise; the smaller stones fell pattering afterwards, and 
then the shower of ashes rushed down ; and that this was by regular pauses, 
which could even be measured by counting in the intervals between each 
shower. — Goethe's Ualidnishc licise. 



356 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

ascribed to aqueous belong in reality also to volcanic agency, and 
may be simply explained by similar processes going on here ac- 
cording to the usual law of gravity. 

Pompeii, the victim of the mountain, loses much of its. interest 
from the removal to the museum at Naples of every article that 
could be removed. All the ancient utensils, household goods, 
and personal ornaments of the inhabitants, had an interest upon 
the very spot where they were last used and handled by their 
owners eighteen centuries ago, which is lost under glass cases, 
in modern show-rooms, with a prattling cicerone in black silk 
name-me-nots showing them off. What remains at Pompeii are 
pillars of brick stuccoed over, walls stuccoed, and embellished 
with some rude paintings and ornaments in fresco on the plaster, 
done mostly with red ochre, and some mosaic or tesselated work 
in marble on the floor, representing, in black and white inlaid 
stones, ill-drawn figures of animals, and such ornaments. The 
interior arrangement of the houses is more interesting than any 
thing remaining in situ at Pompeii. It gives us some idea of the 
amount, or rather of the want of physical civilization, of domestic 
comfort, and of luxury in the ordinary dwellings of the ancients. 
The streets of Pompeii have been narrow lanes, ill paved and ill 
kept, the ruts worn by the cart wheels in the bare rock appearing 
in the street ; and from these ruts being single, it is to be pre- 
sumed that there was little continuous traffic of carts in opposite 
directions, no lines of going and coming carts ; but, as is the case 
now in small Italian towns, the carts have come in from the 
country in the morning, and gone out in the evening in the same 
ruts in which they arrived. The houses have been generally 
low without upstair rooms, and constructed generally on one 
plan. An outside wall encloses a square or oblong space, and 
except the street door, is without opening to the outside for 
light or air. The roof has run with a slight slope from this out- 
side dead wall to an inner wall parallel to it, which determined 
the breadth of the apartments. A row of pillars connected with 
each other by round arches, or by beams within this inner wall 
all round the open space, has supported the extremity of the roof 
on every side of the square open court, and has furnished a 
covered colonnade all round it. In the centre of this open court, 
which is in the best houses paved with marble in ornamental 
figures, has been a fountain, cistern, or receptacle for the rain 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 357 

water from the roofs ; and this open court appears to have been 
the drawing-room of the mansion, or its equivalent. The doors 
and windows of all the rooms have opened into 'tlie colonnade. 
The rooms are very small, about ten or twelve feet square, and 
have been dark and ill ventilated, the windows, small openings, 
in general without glass, and for sake of shelter made in the 
inside wall under the roof of the colonnade. The rooms have 
seldom communications with each other, but each opens into the 
covered gallery or colonnade. The best rooms are very small, 
have never been lined with wood, but merely plastered, and a 
rude ornament in ochre or red lead delineated on the plaster. 
Under this square of dwelling rooms has been a sunk floor, or 
square of vaults for cellars, and for lotlging the slaves. In one of 
these was found the skeleton of a slave, who has had a bell fast- 
ened round his neck, as we put a bell on a cow or sheep. In none 
of these mansions, which, with masters and slaves, must have 
been very close, crowded, and inconvenient, is there any appear- 
ance of an outhouse, yard, privy, or detached building of any kind. 
The rooms have been merely used to retire to at night or in bad 
weather; and the open court in the centre, the covered colonnade 
running round it, and the bath-room, have been the living places 
by day. A basking, Lazaroni, out-of-door life has been then, as 
now, the way of living in this part of Italy. 

The two distinct theatres, one for comedy and one for tragedy, 
and the amphitheatre with its seats for the different classes of 
spectators, its dens for the wild beasts, its issues for them, and for 
the prisoners condemned to be their victims — often prisoners of 
war, not criminals— are the most interesting remains of public 
structures in Pompeii. What a singular state of barbaric civili- 
zation ! The whole population of a little town of six or eight 
thousand inhabitants, even the female sex, the vestals, specta- 
tors of such scenes of carnage ! All classes delighting in combats 
which have not had even the excitement of an equality between 
the parties, or of a doubtful issue, or of the possibility of the 
escape of the human combatant ! The sheer lust of blood-and- 
torturc spectacle has been the only gratification of this refined 
people ! The scholarship of eighteen centuries has been extoll- 
ing Roman virtue, Roman civilization, Roman arts, arms, and 
institutions, until men arc almost afraid to express the opinion, 
that the fine arts, sculpture, architecture, poetry, oratory, and all 



358 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

the rest of them, have been vastly over-rated as indications, or 
means of civilization. The Romans, with all these, were in a 
more uncivilized social condition, had more of the tastes and 
habits of savage life in their highest and most refined period, than 
the inhabitants of New Zealand or of the Sandwich Islands, 
when We first discovered them. King Tommaha or Prince Pom- 
maree was, in reality, much less of a savage than Julius Cajsar, 
or Augustus. 

Naples is a wonderful den of human animals. Beggars, 
thieves, and idlers are lounging at every corner: ladies, monks 
and military fill the streets. Where is the industry, or what the 
means and capital, that keeps this mass in life and movement ? 
It must be the concentration and expenditure of almost all the 
incomes and revenues of the kingdom, in this one spot, by no- 
bility, churchmen, and military. The bustle and hubbub in the 
Strada de Toledo is as great as in the most crowded street of 
London ; but if you mark the stream of people, you see the crowd 
here consists of idlers hanging about, not of passengers hastening 
silently through on their affairs. All are talking at once at the 
highest pitch of their voices, and hands and arms are going as 
violently as tongues. In the secondary and poorer streets, peo- 
ple squatting on the stones in the sun or shade, sleeping, eating, 
working, hunting for vermin in their clothes, playing a favourite 
game of betting on the number of fingers held up (a Roman 
game, micare digitis), all out of doors, and all screaming like 
peacocks, give no favourable impression of their social condition. 

It is very striking to see in this finest soil and climate of Europe, 
this land overflowing with the richest productions for the use of 
man, the peasantry and townspeople of the labouring class clothed 
in sheepskins with the wool on, and in all respects worse clad, 
more wretched, and in food, lodging, property, sense of decency 
in their habits and ways of living, in a lower condition than the 
Laplander on the Norwegian fielde. Their fine climate is their 
curse. Many of the wants and desires which with us are the 
greatest stimulants to industry, and to all the virtues that spring 
from industry, are of little importance here in the catalogue of 
human gratifications. Life may be enjoyed without them ; and 
therefore the industry is wanting, along with the motives. The 
labouring man with us, who could ask, why should I strive to get 
regular employment, or to earn high wages? would be deemed 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 359 

insane. To buy mfeat, drink, fuel, lodging, clothing, and social 
respect among those of your own station, would be the reply. 
But in this country, the labouring man is no fool, who asks, what 
enjoyment or gratification can high wages gained by constant hard 
work give me, equal to the enjoyment of doing nothing, of bask- 
ing in the sun, or sleeping in the shade, doing nothing? Fuel, 
clothing, lodging, food, are in this climate supplied almost sponta- 
neously to man. Fuel to cook with is all we need of firing, and 
even that may be dispensed with by most working people, "for 
our food is sold to us ready cooked at the corner of every street. 
It would be waste, and no comfort in it, to light a fire in our own 
dwellings. Clothing we only want to cover our nakedness; a 
ragged cloak, or sheepskin jacket three generations old, does that. 
Lodging is only necessary to sleep in, and shelter us from rain. 
A mere shed, like a coach-house, does that. We live out of doors. 
Animal food is not necessary, where olive oil is so plentiful as to 
be used for frying all vegetable and farinaceous food, and assimi- 
lating it, as nutritious aliment, to flesh meat. Olive oil, wine, 
Indian corn, flour, legumes, fruit, are to be got in exchange for 
our labour at vintage and harvest, during a few weeks when 
these crops require a great number of hands at once. Why should 
we labour every day? This is the condition of all around us in 
our station ; why should we labour ? 

It is the case, that steady, regular, every-day industry is actually 
not required for enabling these people to satisfy the few wants 
which the blessings of the climate, of the soil, and of the cheap 
nutriment of olive oil, Indian corn, small fish, and fruits, leave 
them ; and they only work by fits and starts. Lazaroni is rather 
a character, than a class of the people, They are all Lazaroni in 
their social condition, in the lounging about idle, and in a state 
almost of nudity, when not forced by want to look for a short job, 
and in their out-of-door way of living. It is in the nature of the 
products of the climate, that the demand for labour on the land 
is desultory — requiring great numbers of hands for short periods; 
and, consequently, the payments are made in portions of the 
material worked upon, not in regular wages. But this material 
includes those necessaries of life for which, in other climes, people 
must labour steadily, day after day. The aniount of food here, 
in chestnuts, figs, fruit, legumes, cakes of Indian corn, various small 
fish, and in the nutriment of olive oil added to those otherwise 



360 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

unsubstantial articles of diet, surpasses all we understand by 
abundance in the northern countries ; and all these require but 
very little human labour for their production. Food for the idle, 
that is food requiring small and irregular application only of 
human labour, is abundant ; and this is evident, from the way 
in which common work is carried on. Time and labour seem 
not worth saving in their estimation. The women are universally 
sauntering about, spinning wool or flax with the distaff and spin- 
dle. A woman will spin as much yarn at her spinning-wheel in 
an hour, as in a week with her distaff and spindle. But I doubt^ 
if a spinning-wheel could be found in Naples. I have seen two 
men carrying between them, slung upon a pole on their shoulders, 
a common-sized paving-stone. One of them could have trans- 
ported six such stones in a common wheelbarrow, with ease. 
Boats are manned with six or seven, or even ten men. A man 
and a boy, or, at the utmost, two men, would be the crew of such 
a craft in any other country. I have seen two asses with a driver 
to each, and a padrone, or overseer, on horseback to attend them, 
employed in trailing into town two sticks with each ass, one on 
each side of the saddle, and the sticks positively of a size that one 
of the drivers might have carried the whole four. In every job, 
the padrone, the helper, the looker-on, the talker, and the listener, 
seem indispensable personages. The division of labour may be 
an evil as well as a good in society. It is an evil, if the time and 
labour saved by it be not applied to reproduction. It is an evil 
among these Lazaroni. Six men doing the work of two merely 
multiply themselves and their idle habits by their division of 
labour. They do nothing with the time and labour they have 
gained by the division — if they have gained any by it — in their 
way of working. This is a point not so thoroughly considered by 
our political economist as it should be. The saving of time and 
labour by machinery, or by a division of labour, is not of itself 
of any value, nor is it adding to national wealth of itself, as our 
great political economist Adam Smith and M'Culloch teach us. 
It is only of value, and adding to national wealth, if the time and 
labour saved be employed in other production. Steam, for in- 
stance, applied to pumping water out of mines, to moving ma- 
chinery, and so on, adds to national wealth, only because the men 
and time employed in pumping, or in moving hand-engines, are 
immediately employed in other analogous productive labour. But 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 361 

if they conld not be employed, if any branch of industry, as, for 
instance, all husbandry labour, or all shoemaking, or all tailoring, 
could be executed by steam machinery, the nation, the community, 
would be no gainer, unless the classes thrown ont of work, and 
idle, can be, and are employed and absorbed in some other kind 
of productive labour. One class only, the employers, would be 
gainers at the expense of another class; and unless that class can 
become productive in some other branch of industry, there is a 
loss, not a gain, to the nation even by machinery. The division 
of labour here is the offspring of idleness, not of industry ; and 
produces idleness, not industry. It is followed by no increased 
production. This evil, in the social condition of the people of 
Italy, is so closely connected with the nature of the soil and cli- 
mate, that it may be doubted if the inhabitants of this part of the 
Italian peninsula ever were in any higher state of civilization than 
they are in at this day. What were the inhabitants of Pompeii, 
but a population of slaves cultivating the earth in chains, of Laza- 
roni basking in the sun, and of public functionaries and patricians 
of enormous wealth, to whom the Lazaroni were so formidable 
that it was necessary to feed them, and keep them in amusement 
and excitement by such shows and bloody spectacles as suited 
their half savage state? The mass of the people then, as now, 
have had no wants but those which the soil, with desultory 
labour, could supply — no civilizing desires for comforts and en- 
joyments which industry only produces. 

It is characteristic here of the social condition, that all trades- 
men's work — shoemakers', tinsmiths', coppersmiths' work — is 
carried on out of doors, in the open air, amidst the gossip and 
bustle of the street passengers ; and all domestic business is done 
on the pavement, or in cellars, or vaults of coach-house-like 
dwellings, with a side open to the street, leaving the whole in- 
terior of their households exposed to view, and only shut in at 
night or in rainy weather, there being no windows to these dens. 
The sense or feeling of domestic privacy, or the tastes, civilized 
habits, and virtues connected with this feeling, cannot exist, where 
the whole family are separated from the view of the passengers 
in the streets, even when in bed, only by a bit of mat hung up for 
the occasion. Whoever considers well the causes which act on 
the social state of the Irish or Neapolitan, and the Swiss or Frencli 
people in the same station of life, will find that the lodging of a 
24 



362 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

population, the ordinary standard of house accommodation for 
the families of the lowest class, is very closely connected with 
their moral condition. The first step, perhaps, towards the im- 
buing the Irish people with the peaceful habits they are accused 
of wanting, would be giving them timber free of duty, for build- 
ing their dwellings on a civilized standard of accommodation. 

The soil and climate which produce industry produce the real 
crop on which man lives in well-being, civilization and comfort 
— and not the soil and climate which produce the objects of in- 
dustry : and viewing the world in large, industry will be found 
to thrive in every country almost in the inverse ratio to the value 
and amount of its natural productions. This is a just balance 
made by Providence in the lot of man. With their crops of wine, 
oil, silk, grain of every kind, and endless succession of fruits and 
of vegetable food, with their perpetual fine weather and easy Ufe, 
what is the condition, produced by these very advantages, of the 
inhabitants of this earthly paradise ? The poorest cotter on the 
poorest hill-side on the north of Scotland is a decently clothed, 
decently brought-up, intellectual man, with habits and ideas of a 
civilized being, compared to the half-naked, filthy, half-savage 
human animal wallowing in a sheepskin with the wool on, and a 
tattered brown cloak as his only body covering, upon the marble 
steps of the palaces and churches of Italy. The soil and climate 
are not more superior in the neighbourhood of Naples to the soil 
and climate of the north of Europe than the social and moral con- 
dition of the people is inferior. But moral causes, as well as 
physical, have their part in this low social condition of the people 
of Naples. The population is reckoned about 338,000 souls. It 
is a city, therefore, about one-third more populous than Glasgow. 
Here we see strikingly the social effects of functionarism in with- 
drawing from the paths of industry the class who should be dif- 
fusing employment in the useful arts among the labouring classes 
around them. In Naples there are 4,632 secular clergy. If to 
these we add the monastic clergy of 1,960 monks, and the nuns, 
who are 717 in number, we have in all 7,809 persons withdrawn 
from the pursuits of industry, and earning social influence and 
all that men strive to obtain by industry, in other employments 
than the useful arts. We see here, in its extreme, the working of 
a forced church extension, of a numerous establishment of clergy 
in a community. The effects will be proportionably the same 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 363 

whatsoever be the reUgion; the same proportionably in Presbyte- 
rian Glasgow as in Catholic Naples, if the clerical body were in- 
creased upon the principle of what governments and clergy may 
think requisite for a people, instead of upon the principle that the 
people themselves will provide for their own religious instruction 
according to their wants, and recipient capability of using it. 
Carry the clerical establishment of Glasgow to 4,873 persons, 
which would be in proportion to that of Naples — if that number 
would satisfy our admirers of church extension — abstract this 
number from the pursuits of productive industry — and Glasgow 
would be another Naples. 

This Naples is the St. Giles's of Europe. I would advise the 
first pedler who travels this road to bring in his pack a goodly 
assortment of small-toothed combs — not that the natives are civil- 
ized enough to need such machinery — they use more summary 
measures, and you see them sitting all of a row before their doors 
with their heads in each other's laps in turns, and searching for — 
animated ideas ; — but for the benefit of the English ladies who 
may visit Naples, A man impregnates his skin with the effluvia 
of tobacco and wine, and offers no such tempting pasture to the 
herds and flocks of his Neapolitan majesty ; but a delicate English 
lady, in all her cleanliness and loveliness, swarming, as she must 
be — whew ! The English lady, in fact, must leave all her delicacy 
at home, and all her blushes, unless a small travelling assortment, 
if she intends to reside among this more than half-naked, and all 
alive people. The country about Naples may be an earthly 
paradise : but it is paradise after the fall, given up to the serpent 
for an habitation. 



CHAPTER XVIir. 

TRAVELLING IN ITALY.— VETTURINL— CAPUA.— TERRACINA.— PONTINE 
MARSHES.— MAREMMA.— THE APPROACH TO ROME.— COLISEUM. 

There are three ways of travelling in Italy. One is to travel 
post, carrying all England along with you in your own English 
travelling carriage. With English books, English servants, 
English habits, and a foreign courier to cheat him, the English 
traveller may get over a good deal of country, and a good deal of 
money in this way, without the trouble of taking in any more 
ideas, or loading the memory with any more weighty matters 
than in seeing a diorama passing before his eyes. Another way 
is to travel in your own foreign carriage with hired horses with 
which the vetturino drives you to your journey's end, at the rate 
of five-and-twenty or thirty miles a day. There is often the in- 
convenience attending this way, that asthe driver, at the end of 
his engagement, may have to ride his horses back without any 
return fare, which he would have if the carriage as well as the 
horses belonged to him, you are not much cheaper, and are vastly 
slower in your movements, than with post horses: and the owner, 
or vetturino, will scarcely come himself to ride back with his 
horses if he can put off any lad upon you to do the job. The 
third, and ordinary way of travelling for all ranks in the country, 
is by a voiturin, or vetturino, who has his own carriage and 
horses. They are a class of coach proprietors, many of them in- 
telligent, respectable men, who drive a light carriage of their own 
that will hold four inside and two outside passengers, and with a 
pair of gaunt, bony horses. You engage the number of places 
you want, and the vetturino visits all the inns to find other tra- 
vellers going the same road to fill up the empty places. There 
is, of course, considerable difference in the rates paid, even in the 
same carriage, for the same distance, as the vetturino will take 
any fare at last rather than none. It is necessary, also, to have a 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 365 

regular contract in writing, and to insure it by taking an earnest 
upon it — a piece of money from the vetturiuo, which is returned 
to him when he is fairly on the road ; for in Italy it appears to 
be the principle in all dealings between man and man — impose if 
you can. The average expense, travelling in this way, is about 
16.?. sterling a day for each passenger : but this includes your 
living on the road, that is, a dinner-breakfast — dinner as to the 
fare, but breakfast as to the hour, about ten or eleven — a good 
supper at eight or nine in the evening, and your bed. The vet- 
turino always engages for the living, and the traveller is much 
better served, and more cheaply, than if he paid for himself. The 
vetturini form a class all over the Continent, known to each other, 
and have the innkeepers at their command, because the inn which 
had the reputation of serving their passengers ill might as well be 
shut up. An English family travelling in their own carriage with 
four post horses would not get the best beds or the best fare at 
every Italian inn, if a known vetturino with his passengers came 
to the door at the same moment. The ordinary way of their 
travelling is, to start at four in the morning, and stop at nine or 
ten. They start again at two and travel till six or seven, and in 
this way get on for weeks together, at the rate of thirty miles a 
day. The old-fashioned arrangement of the vetturino undertaking 
for the lodging and feeding, as well as for the transporting of his 
passengers, is not, as our English tourists imagine, devised for the 
sake of saving them from being imposed upon by Italian inn- 
keepers. It is a remnant of ancient manners from the ages of 
pilgrimages and crusaders, when bands of pious passengers from 
all parts of Christendom contracted with conductors to lead them 
to Rome, and purvey for them out and home. It is at this day 
the best way for the traveller to see a foreign country. It takes 
him as fast over it as he can go, with the advantage of seeing 
what is remarkable, and brings him into contact with people of 
the country, and travellers of all kinds and classes. 

We set out early in the morning from Naples by vetturino, 
and got to Mola de Gaeta for the first night's quarters, stopping 
in the forenoon, for a few hours, at Capua. The road to Capua 
is over a highly cultivated fertile plain. The most fertile land in 
Europe is probably hereabouts, in the plain watered by the Vul- 
turno, because, with the finest climate for vegetable production, 
the soil is a deep black, alluvial, garden mould, which, in any 



366 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

climate, would be rich land ; and from its flat surface, and low 
level, it retains the necessary moisture, or receives it easily by 
irrigation. The gods, says Polybius, might dispute the possession 
of such a delicious plain as that of Capua. Yet in this earthly 
paradise, the people are not merely in rags and wretchedness ; it 
is difficult even to conceive humanity in so low a condition as 
you see it in here. In the streets of Capua, you see animals 
which you can scarcely acknowledge to be human beings. The 
Esquimaux has a covering for his body, which, even in his rude 
state, shows a sense of decency, as well as the mere feeling of 
cold — a sense of ornament even may be traced in his seal-skin 
garment. But here the sense of decency, even in the female 
animal of the human species, is apparently little higher than 
among the irrational creatures. How low bad government may 
reduce the civilization of a country is impressively brought out 
here. Come to Capua, all ye conservatives of existing institutions, 
all ye defenders of things as they are, all ye good, pious, moral 
gentlemen of England, who look with aversion on every reform, 
with horror on every social change, come to Capua, and see the 
working of your principle of conservatism. It is not the wish 
certainly of the Neapolitan government to have its subjects in a 
low and miserable condition : but it is the fear of change, our own 
principle of conservatism — which shuns all improvement ; and 
where society is not improving, it is retrograding. There is no 
stand-still in human aff'airs. 

From Mola de Gaeta, where a branch of low hills from the 
Apennine chain approaches the coast, we travelled next day to 
Terracina, passing through the beautiful scenery around the 
httle towns of Ilri and Fondi. Fondi is more celebrated for the 
attempt, in 1534, of Hayraddin Barbarossa with a Turkish 
squadron, to carry off, for the seraglio, the beautiful Countess 
Julia de Gonzagua, than for the eloquence or logic of Thomas 
d'Aquinas. Yet here he taught theology. He was a great man 
in his day, and for generations after his day:— for ideas never 
die, and his may still be influencing theological and metaphysical 
science. 

In this Italian atmosphere, there is a transparency in the shadows 
seldom seen in our climate in our rural scenery. With us, all that 
is in shade is indistinctly made out. The shadows in our land- 
scape paintings, and drawings, are often laid in muddy, because, 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 367 

in fact, they often are so in nature — and it is not every painter 
wiio is a poet of the brush ; who can select, and avoid or take 
what nature offers. Copying nature hteratini is not painting well. 
Here objects, even in the deepest shadow of a mountain, are very 
distinct, both in outhne and colour, although kept down, and sub- 
dued by the general shade : and this atmospheric peculiarity in 
the real scenery of Italy gives a peculiar character to the paint- 
ings of it, a something different from the way in which the artists 
of other countries would conceive and express the same objects 
under the same circumstances. 

In strolling about Terracina, in defiance of malaria, which has 
its head quarters here, I came upon a little watermill with a per- 
pendicular shaft turned round by the rill of water striking upon 
vanes inserted obliquely in it to receive the impulse — the mill of 
the Scandinavian peasant, and still found in the Shetland islands, 
and some of the Hebrides. How very Uttle progress iiad been 
made by the ancients in the useful arts, at the time when many 
of the fine arts were carried to great perfection ! A good mill is 
a machine which, if it ever had existed in a country, could never 
have been lost as an invention. The Romans have ground their 
corn in hand, or cattle mills, or mills worked by slave labour, or 
in such rude machines as this watermill, at a time when, in archi- 
tecture and sculpture, they had made a progress not yet equaled. 
Cicero's bread was made of flour ground in such a rude imperfect 
machine ! They had neither shoes to their feet nor shirts to their 
backs when, to please the eye, they had statues and magnificent 
buildings which are still the admiration of the world. The wool- 
len tunic next the skin worn while it lasted, the woollen toga 
coarse and heavy as a horse-rug, and the raw wool much less 
perfectly cleaned of its animal oil than a horse-rug, must have 
rendered the windward side of the Roman gentleman, with all his 
luxury, considerably the most agreeable on a sunshine day. 

On leaving Terracina, we come upon the Pontine marshes. 
The Roman Maremma, or Campagna, extends from the frontier 
of Tuscany to the Neapolitan frontier, and from the foot of the 
Apennines to the Mediterranean. This tract, including in its 
widest scope Rome itself, is all more or less unhealthy, or subject 
to malaria, but is not all marshy. The greater part, on the con- 
trary, is a flat, dry, pasture land, with too little rather than loo 
much moisture, the ditches holding no water from waul of a 



368 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

retentive subsoil, and the ponds and watering places for cattle 
artificial. The Pontine marshes, included in this Maremma, begin 
here at Terracina, and occupy an area of about eight leagues in 
length along the coast, by about two in breadth ; and are so in- 
undated that they cannot be cultivated or inhabited. The whole 
marshy surface in this state has been estimated at about 56,000 
English acres. On the south, this marsh is bounded by the sea, 
or by salt water lagunes ; on the east, by the high grounds and 
shore at Terracina ; on the north, by the high grounds about 
Velletri ; and on the west, by the plains of Cisterno. This marsh 
is formed by the rivers Araasino,Uifente, Cavatella, Tippin, Ninfo, 
and other mountain streams, which are the drainage of a large 
amphitheatre of country, but have no sufficient outlet, nor suffi- 
cient descent to carry off the waters they bring down. In the 
time of the Romans great works — among others the canal by 
which Horace travelled, and the Appian way itself,— were con- 
structed for draining, and giving access to this tract ; and although 
it was so far rendered habitable that Pliny says there were three- 
and-twenty towns in or round this district, the same author still 
speaks of it as a lake, or marsh, of which the exhalations were 
considered noxious as far as Rome. The draining of this marsh 
has often been attempted, and abandoned, in later times. The 
blame of the unsuccessful attempts at drainage is always thrown 
by travellers upon the papal government. Bad enough the go- 
vernment may be, and like all governments, good or bad, it must 
put up with more than its own fair share of blame for all that does 
not succeed : but the popes in reality have not been so very inert 
in attempting to recover this land. Martin V, in the beginning 
of the 15th century, constructed a drain, the Rio Martino, on such 
a scale that it has been sometimes ascribed to the ancient Romans. 
His death, in 1431, interrupted this work; but in each succeeding 
century, in almost each pontificate,considerable efforts at drainage 
have been made. But to drain an extensive area of flooded marsh 
land on a level with the sea, or with very little fall, and receiving 
the water of a very extensive amphitheatre of high grounds, and 
hills, without any lower level to drain it off into, would puzzle 
the most Protestant of governments. The Mediterranean Sea, be 
it remembered, has no rise and fall, no ebb tide giving a drainage 
of several feet of level for half of the twenty-four hours, as on our 
no-popery shores of Kent, Lincolnshire, or Holland. After lead- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 369 

ing the inland waters by canals to the sea-side, there is, after all, 
no outlet or escape for them. This impediment to drainage on all 
the coasts of the Mediterranean is insurmountable, and from cen- 
tury to century is necessarily increasing. Land is forming, and 
gaining upon the sea, by the diluvium of the rivers, and the accu- 
mulation of vegetable matter on it ; but such low tracts never can 
have been healthy, never can be made so, and must every century, 
as the marshy surface extends itself, be growing less and less 
habitable. True it is these tracts are studded thickly' with shape- 
less masses of ruined habitations, wljich show that the Maremma, 
at least, if not the marsh itself, has been inhabited densely in the 
time of the Romans. But the agricultural population of the 
ancient Roman territory were slaves working in chains under a 
few freedmen as slave drivers, or factors, and were in reality 
in no higher condition than the oxen, or husbandry horses of 
the present day. The waste of human life, in this class, was re- 
garded only as a matter of profit and loss. If a farm had to be 
stocked with slaves, the losses by fever, or malaria, was a matter 
of no more importance than the tear and wear of horses and 
cattle in any of our agricultural undertakings — a deduction merely 
from the gross value of the crops, to be allowed for in the cal- 
culation. The aqueducts, towns, arches, ruins great and small, 
thickly sprinkled over this waste and uninhabited Maremma, in- 
dicate no greater salubrity of the air in former days, but only a 
greater disregard of human life, nor perhaps any great resident 
free population. 

The fixed inhabitants of the whole district called Maremma do 
not now exceed, it is said, 16,000 souls, as, owing to the un- 
healthiness, or malaria, few places in it are habitable all the year 
round ; but from 25,000 to 30,000 people come down from the high 
grounds, the Abruzzi and the Sabine hills, to lay down the crops 
and to reap them. The unhealthiness is aggravated by this kind 
of migratory life of the cultivators. When there is work to be 
done in this flat unwholesome country, they leave the villages on 
the high ground to pass a few weeks or months in it ; and wood 
being very scarce, as the Maremma is destitute of trees, they 
lodge on the ground in temporary straw or reed huts, like bee- 
hives in shape, put up in the fields in which they are working, 
with a (e\v sticks or hurdles to support the straw or reeds ; and 
into these huts the labourer crawls at night, and in the heat of 



370 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

the day, and sleeps on the bare earth. Fever and ague would 
be inmates of such a lodging in any climate. This migratory 
life, also, is unfavourable to the morality, as well as to the health 
and industry of the people. A shifting population is always in 
a low moral condition, because the influence of public opinion 
upon private conduct is lost where the individuals are isolated, 
and beyond the social restraints and influences which neighbours 
and friends exercise over each other in a fixed state of inhabita- 
tion. This appears to be the great demoralizing influence in the 
condition of the peasantry or labouring class in this part of Italy, 
and the true cause of the banditti life resorted to sometimes by 
people who, in general, are found to be not the fixed inhabitants 
but the migrating wanderers about the Maremma. The little 
towns, also, in which the people live when not employed in the 
Maremma — viz., Cisterno, Gensano, Velletri, Albano, and many 
others— furiiish very unwholesome lodging to the lower, and 
even the middle classes. The inhabitants occupy ill- ventilated 
cellars, or coach-houses, on the grt)und floors of the better 
classes, or of ruinous decaying buildings not fully inhabited. A 
perpetual malaria must exist in these damp small dungeons with., 
out ventilation, light, cleanliness, or any domestic convenience. 
The cooking goes on just within the door, which must be left ajar 
for receiving light, and letting out the smoke, it being door, win- 
dow, and chimney, in most of the houses of the labouring class in 
these little towns. The beds are in the interior of the den, con- 
cealed by a bit of curtain, or more usually by wine casks, jars, 
or such household goods, piled up before them. In the far end 
twinkles a little lamp night and day, before a print of the Virgin. 
This adoption by the Romish church of the del penates of the 
ancients is general over Italy. Around these cellars, or ground- 
floor rooms, is an accumulation of old rubbish of former edifices, 
from which the exhalations in such a climate must be very un- 
wholesome. The country could never have been healthy ; and 
the mode of living could not be less favourable to the health of 
the people. From Naples to Rome you do not see one individual 
in a state of robust health. The whole population is of a sickly 
appearance, like convalescents from fever, or ague, sauntering 
about their hospital grounds. 

The land all the way from Naples to Rome is held in large 
estates, let out to metayer tenants who provide the labour, and 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 371 

the landlord the land, stock, and utensils, and the produce is 
divided between the parties, or it is feued in perpetuity, or for 
long periods, at lixed and heavy feu rents in kind. From the lit- 
tle improvement, or alteration for ages, in the modes of husbandry, 
or markets in Italy, the difference in the vahie of old feu duties 
and their present value, and between the produce of the same 
land now and formerly, is not so great as with us in Scotland. 
The dominium nobile, and the dominium utile, are two distinct 
interests in the land here as with us ; but the former has not be- 
come a mere illusory payment for the land compared to its present 
value; but is still a real rent of estates, and retaining all its original 
proportion to the value of the land. 

In all these fine southern climates, one evil peculiarly affecting 
the condition of the working man weighs heavily against all their 
advantages. It is that, in reality, there are two winters in the 
year for man and beast. There is not only our winter, little felt, 
indeed, in some particular localities, as about Naples, but still wet, 
occasionally cold, and of such weather that agricultural labour is 
interrupted from the state of the land, cattle must be tended in- 
doors, and in general in Italy it is very severe ; but there is an- 
other winter as far as regards labour, a summer-winter, in which, 
for three or four months, all out-door work of man and beast is 
suspended by heat, and much more interrupted than it ever is by- 
cold in our climate. All cattle must be provided for in-doors, as 
in winter. Fodder must be cut and water carried to them. From 
extreme cold, man and beast have a relief in hard work; but 
from overwhelming heat there is no relief but bodily inaction. 
All water power, as well as animal power, is interrupted by it, 
and many arts and manufactures cannot, evidently, be carried on 
in these southern chmates, without an enormous waste of labour 
and life. This summer-winter, also, is the season of malaria, pro- 
ducing fevers among working-people exposed to the heat and 
dews, far more generally, and dangerously, than epidemic diseases 
in our climate. 

From Cisterno we got to Rome easily in a day, the third from 
leaving Naples, stopping at Albano to breakfast. Albano stands 
on high ground, from which the descent into the great plain of the 
Campagna is very impressive. This plain of the Campagna, 
boundless to the eye, is without trees, or houses, or ponds, or run- 
ning waters, but is one vast sheet of dry, fine, pasture grass, 



372 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

thickly studded with shapeless remains of buildings. The city of 
Rome sits by herself in the midst of this green, yet uninhabited, 
uncultivated, joyless desert. Rome sits here in lonely grandeur 
on her plain— a type of what Rome was of old in the midst of 
the world. The approach to Rome by this ancient Appian way 
has great moral grandeur. For twelve or fifteen miles, pieces of 
ancient pavement, ancient walls of bricks built checker-wise, 
shapeless ruins, masses of rubbish of considerable elevation, arches 
of demolished buildings, monuments with inscriptions not legible, 
fountains not running, and broken ranges of aqueducts for con- 
veying water from the hills, are scattered in all directions upon 
the deserted plain — deserted by man, yet covered with remains 
of human power, and with the habitations of an extinct popu- 
lation. There is no sound or sign of human industry on this 
lifeless sea of grass. The lark singing in the sky, and a solitary 
shepherd and his dog in the distant horizon, are all of living ob- 
jects that strike ear or eye. You reach the gate of Rome through 
the silence and solitude of the grave. Within, all is as silent, so- 
lemn, and destitute of movement as without. A clerical-looking 
soldier on guard, a half-asleep functionary of the custom-house, 
a few labourers working at remarkably slow time on the repair 
of the causeway, are all the concourse at the gate of the mistress 
of the world. You pass the gate, are within her walls, and are 
still in the country, with fields, gardens, and vineyards on each 
hand. Roads bounded by white walls on each side, a crucifix at 
every turn of the road, and in the distance a monk, or a beggar 
crossing it, are all that, for nearly a mile within this gate, remind 
you that here is Rome. But our road becomes a street at last, 
with houses, palaces, churches, ruins, temples, triumphaLarches, 
statues, fountains, priests, monks, soldiers, people, shops, carriages, 
bustle, and business. 

We found some difficulty in lodging ourselves, as all the^inns 
and lodging houses are occupied on account of the approaching 
holy week of Easter, which is celebrated with great pomp by the 
Catholic church. By going, however, a little beyond the circle 
within which strangers generally herd, we got very good lodging, 
in the Via delle Quatre Fontane, at a moderate rate of two pias- 
tres a day — moderate for Rome at this particular season. It is 
reckoned that the population of Rome is increased by 30,000 
strangers generally during the holy week. This estimate is proba- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 373 

biy an exaggeration in modern times, even if it include the inhabi- 
tants of the neighbouring towns, villages, and country— the pil- 
grims of a day on foot, in carts, or in chaises, who come for a 
forenoon, and not strictly the strangers. The number of the latter 
is no doubt considerable ; but the places of resort being the same 
for all strangers — the galleries and antiquities, and frequented at 
certain hours — one sees the whole body of foreigners, more than 
in other cities, at one time, and is apt to over-estimate their num- 
bers. There are few or no diligences running daily between 
Rome and other distant cities : and taking the steam vessels which 
stop at Civita Vecchia, the voiturins and the post horses at the 
different stations near Rome into consideration, you see no means 
of conveying 30,000 travellers and their luggage to and fro in any 
moderate space of time — nor one-tenth of that number — to the 
holy week. Artists, foreign clergy on business, and foreign no- 
bility, with a few of the English of the highest class, and a great 
body of English travellers of the nondescript classes, form the 
mass of the foreigners. English sign-boards of " Horses to Hire," 
"English Grocer and Tea-dealer," " Dealer in Curiosities," and 
so on, show that there is a perpetual stream of English running 
through the place. 

A valet-de-place, cicerone, or bear-leader, is the first of the 
Romans who makes his bow to you, and recommends himself as 
a guide to all that is remarkable in Rome, at the rate of five francs 
a day. He is a very useful personage at Rome, provided he is 
intelligent, and provided you never take him with you. If you 
do, you are the party fairly entitled to be paid for the day's work, 
for you have the fatigue of listening to a rigmarole of names and 
phrases that would tire the patient ear of any of his marble 
statues. But consult him in the morning before you sally forth, 
as a kind of two-legged dictionary, get all the information you 
can out of him about what you intend to see, and the way to it ; 
pluck him and leave him at home, and the goose is worth his price. 

The Coliseum, of all that Rome incloses, should be seen alone 
and by moonlight. No other human monument speaks so strongly 
to the moral sense of man. The deep and lonely silence of the 
moonlight hour within its vast walls, is broken only by the chirp- 
ing of the solitary cricket in the grass of that arena which has re- 
sounded with the shrieks of human beings, the wild yells of fero- 
cious beasts tearing them, and the acclamations of eighty thou- 



374 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

sand spectators rejoicing in the butchery. This is the tritimph of 
the Christian reUgion. This immense edifice is coeval with 
Christianity, and is its noblest history. Eighteen centuries ago, 
the most civilized people on the face of the earth erected this huge 
pile for savage and bloody spectacles, such as no known tribe on 
the face of the earth at the present day is so barbarous, so desti- 
tute of humanity, feeling for others, and discrimination of right 
and wrong, as to enjoy or tolerate. The New Zealander, or the 
Cherokee of the present day, stands higher as a moral being im- 
bued with feehngs of humanity, and of duty to his fellow-men, 
than the citizen of ancient Rome in his most civilized state. Is 
this no improvement in the social condition of man ? Is man not 
in a progressive state as a moral and intellectual being? We may 
rather ask, if human nature itself has not changed during these 
eighteen centuries ; and if we really belong to the same species of 
beings as the men who, eighteen centuries ago, laid those stones 
upon each other for the uses for which this immense fabric was 
erected. These stones are still sharply square. Man has changed 
more than his works. How little appear all the squabbles be- 
tween church and church, between Catholic and Protestant, 
Lutheran and Presbyterian, sect and sect, opinion and opinion, 
when we consider this sublime result of Christianity as a whole, 
amidst these walls which witnessed its origin, its progress, and 
are now bearing testimony to its humanizing influences on the 
condition of man ! Details vanish before the sublime result. 
Time itself seems to vanish amidst the works of man standing for 
eighteen centuries, uninjured but by his own hands. What are 
eighteen centuries in the history of the human race ? — a span of 
time too short to reduce their buildings to dust, yet long enough 
to elevate their physical and m^oral condition from the deepest 
barbarism, ignorance, and wickedness, to civilization, knowledge, 
and religion ; to raise them morally and intellectually to a new 
species of beings. The changes of eighteen centuries are enclosed 
within these gray walls of the Flavian amphitheatre. The mind 
involuntarily runs back over the footsteps of time, to consider 
what other events, influential on the condition of man, these walls 
have witnessed. Is it an unreasonably extended view, here, 
amidst the remains of the power, civilization, and barbarity of 
man eighteen hundred years ago, to consider causes which first 
appeared in the world about three centuries back as only now 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 375 

beginning to act powerfully and visibly in the affairs of society ? 
The diffusion of knowledge and mental power by the art of print- 
ing, of religious inquiry by the Reformation, of new and artificial 
tastes and wants which sprung up suddenly and simultaneously 
in Europe on the discovery of America and the navigation to the 
East, and which are now more influential among men as motives 
of action and industry than the natural wants connected with the 
support of life— for such are the acquired tastes for objects un- 
known in former times, as tobacco, coffee, sugar, distilled liquor, 
which now set in motion more of human activity than the Roman 
power ever wielded, or all the monarchs of Europe in the present 
day can command — the introduction of a new article of food in 
the potato, of a new clothing material in cotton, of a new power 
for human use in steam, are causes which, if we reflect on their 
obscure, and unobserved origin and first progress, and their sub- 
sequent vast development and influence on the human race in 
this age, we must regard as events in the moral world, parallel 
and equivalent to those deemed miraculous in the physical. These 
mighty causes must work out mighty effects in the social condi- 
tion of man. It is absurd, it is almost impious, to suppose that 
such moral wonders have been called into action for no purpose 
— and that the social arrangements constructed when these were 
not in existence, or only beginning to influence human affairs, 
can be adapted to the future social condition of man, and sliould 
be pressed down upon it as of fitting capacity and suitable mould. 
It is an error not dissimilar to that of the first Jewish converts to 
Christianity, who witnessed the not more astonishing miracles in 
the pliysical world, and supposed the effects were to be confined 
within the circumcision and the law. The whole of civilized so- 
ciety is in a state of transition. The laws, institutions, the very 
ideas belonging to those ages of darkness and barbarism which 
followed the downfall of the Roman empire, are silently but 
rapidly passing away, and a new state of society is forming itself. 
A day will arrive in the progress of the human race, when every 
record or trace of our existing establishments will be regarded 
with the same curiosity with which we now regard those of the 
Roman power before its decline. The feudal arrangements of 
society which sprung up and overspread its ruins are, in their 
turn, decaying and giving place to other ideas and principles; and 
in this slow but certain succession of one system of human affairs 



376 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

to another, like the successive formations of rocks in geological 
science, the philosopher and the truly pious men hail in every 
change an evident amelioration of the moral and physical condi- 
tion of mankind, a wonderful advance in religion, morality, good 
government, and well-being; and leave to the bigots in legislation 
and religious forms the inconsistent and fruitless attempt to hold 
back this mighty movement of divine and beneficent will for the 
improvement of the moral and physical condition of its creatures. 
These walls of the Flavian amphitheatre may witness in the next 
eighteen centiiries — and no natural cause seems to forbid the idea 
of their enduring so long — changes and improvements in the state 
of human society, as great as those which have consigned them 
in our times to the lizard and the owl. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

NOTES ON ST. PETER'S.— ON ROME.— POPULATION.— POSITION.— CAUSES 
OF THE RISE OF ROME.— ORIGIN OF RIGHTS OF PROPERTY.— CIVILIZA- 
TION OF ANCIENT ROME. 

Great is my veneration for the opinions of all constituted 
authorities — from the pope's to the kirk-session officer's — from 
the lord of session's to the town-crier's — and doubly great for the 
opinions of the self-constituted authorities in the realms of litera- 
ture and taste. In the courts of these authorities, animosity, 
virulence, and bad feeling rise high, just in proportion to the 
smallness and unimportance of the matters in question. With 
fear and trembling, therefore, I venture to propound my own secret 
heresy in a small matter of taste, and to avow that St. Peter's, the 
great cathedral of St. Peter, appears to me a great architectural 
failure. The parts are magnificent, and the whole of no effect 
by reason of the magnificence of the parts. They divide the 
effect, distract the attention of the spectator, and prevent any 
adequate impression from the first view of a structure so vast as 
a whole. The spectator only views it piecemeal, not as one mass. 
We all know that St. Paul's, with its dome, could stand inside of 
St. Peter's ; yet the impression of St. Paul's on the spectator is so 
much greater, that it is with difficulty, and upon consideration and 
comparison only, that he admits the dimensions of the fabric, and 
especially of the dome, to be so greatly inferior to St. Peter's ; 
and he finds the dome of St. Paul's far more impressive and 
grand than that of St, Peter's, both in the near and in the distant 
view, both inside and outside. The reason I imagine to be, that 
the dome of St. Paul's is simple, without accompaniment ; the 
spectator sees it, and it alone ; and receives its full impression un- 
disturbed, without by any superfluity of parts, or within by any 
profusion of ornament. St. Peter's, again, is overloaded in the 
exterior by so many accompaniments of pillars, colonnades, aiul 
ornaments, that the mind receives no undivided impression from 
25 



378 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

ii as a whole. The inside, with its silk hangings, brilliant paint- 
ings, polished marble pillars, statues, gold and silver altar orna- 
ments, is hke a peep into a child's penny show-box. All is tinsel 
and glitter; neither the eyejior the mind takes it in as a whole ; 
but views it|n detail, and from the multiplicity and splendour of 
the parts,with a kind of painful distraction. You stand under the 
dome of St. Paul's with an undivided feeling of awe. You cross 
and recross St. Peter's before you are led to look up at all, so 
many other objects press upon your notice ; and when you do, it 
is from comparison and reflection, not from immediate impression, 
that you arrive at the conclusion that it must be very vast and 
sublime ; and that you ought to feel its grandeur, but somehow 
you don't. 

An important principle in the fine arts, and in literary compo- 
sition, is involved in this superior effect produced by the inferior 
structure of St. Paul's, in consequence of the simplicity and un- 
obtrusiveness of its accompaniments or parts. 

I have read or heard somewhere that architects admit that St. 
/Peter's appears less than it is at first sight ; but that this is its 
great perfection, as this impression of its smallness is produced by 
the just and perfect proportion of all its parts. But, with all sub- 
mission to architects and artists, this is sheer jargon. Architecture, 
in common sculpture and painting, addresses itself to the mind 
through the sense of sight, and its end and object are to impress 
the mind with feelings of the beauty, grandeur, or sublimity of 
the object it produces. Now what kind of perfection of propor- 
tion is that by which a building fails of this object of architecture; 
and by which material, laboiu", and talent are expended, in order 
to make a building appear less, and to produce an inferior im- 
pression on the mind, through the sense of sight, to that which it 
might do ? The end and object of piling all these stones upon 
each other were to produce at first sight impressions of sublimity, 
grandeur, or beauty upon the mind of the beholders. To send 
them home to reflect, calculate, and compare, in order to arrive 
at a just impression of the magnitude and sublimity of St. Peter's, 
is not the object of architecture as a fine art. The same quantity 
of stones and human labour in any shape, would, upon consider- 
ation and reflection, produce this after-thought impression. To 
call that a just and perfect proportion which fails in the end and 
object of the art is the entailed nonsense of artists handed down 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 379 

from one generation to another, and adopted as hereditary undeni- 
able axioms. In the fine arts, as in pohtics, many people can only 
see out of their neighbours' spectacles. 

Rome is not quite so populous as Edinburgh. It contains 
158,678 inhabitants. About a century ago, viz., in July, 1714, 
the inhabitants were found to amount to 143,000; but the Jews 
not being human beings at that time in the estimation of the 
church, and who amount to 8000 or 9000, were not included in 
that enumeration. The number of ecclesiastics in the present 
population is 5267; viz., 1478 secular clergy, 2208 monks or 
persons belonging to monastic establishments, and 1581 nims. 
About a century ago, the whole ecclesiastical population was 
reckoned at 62S5, and 1814 nuns. The houses of the middle 
and lower classes are four or five stories high, containing several 
families under one roof, with one common entry and stairs; and 
the streets are narrow, dirty, and without foot pavement. The 
Canongate and Cowgate of Edinburgh give a good idea of the 
ordinary streets of Rome. Half or more of the area within the 
walls is not occupied with buildings, and probably never was 
built upon. It entered into the principle of the military fortifica- 
tion of cities before the invention of gunpowder to leave such a 
space as would protect the citizens inhabiting the centre from mis- 
siles, and would also furnish room and^ fodder for a day or two, 
for sheep or cattle driven upon an alarm within the walls. The 
enormous extent of walls around ancient cities, in some Eastern 
remains, of many leagues in circuit, is by no means an indication, 
as antiquarians consider it, of an enormous resident population ; 
but merely of the numbers of men who from without as well as 
from within, and from a circle possibly of several leagues from the 
city, could be raised to man the walls on the approach of a be- 
sieging army. The fortifications constructing round Paris are 
laid out upon this old principle. 

The expenditure of the large incomes of the nobility and high 
clergy resident in Rome, and of the revenues of the Papal Slates 
estimated to be about 1,800,000 pounds sterling, and of which 
the greater proportion is laid out in Rome itself, everything being 
centralized in this city, and the considerable sums, besides, ex- 
pended by strangers, should make Rome one of the wealthiest 
cities ki the world, for this expenditure among her population has 
been going on for ages within her walls. Yet no city, except 



380 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

Naples, displays so much poverty and misery, and has so many 
wretched idle people wandering about in it. They live each in 
his station, beggar or banker, thief or prince, upon this money 
that is passing through. They breed up to the subsistence it gives, 
each in his station ; are numerous enough to keep each other 
poor ; and they do not labour. A people are not rich by the 
amount of money passing through their country ; but by the 
amount of their own productive labour. Spain was, and Rome 
is, an example of the little benefit idle people derive from the 
mere unreproductive receipt and expenditure of money among 
them. They breed up to the amount, and are as poor as when 
the amount was small. Productive industry is the only capital 
which enriches a people, and spreads national prosperity and 
well-being. " In all labour there is profit," says Solomon. What 
is the science of Political Economy, but a dull sermon on this 
text? 

The seven hills of ancient Rome have been such elevations of 
alluvial formation as now exist on both sides of the river-valley 
of the Tiber a little higher up, and which on the left bank termi- 
nate at the Capitoline and Palatine hills. These seven hills have 
been eminences of from 50 to 150 feet high above the river plain; 
and although the ruins of buildings, and degradation of soil dur- 
ing so many ages must have reduced their original height, they 
are still very good town hills, as well marked in Rome, as Lud- 
gate Hill, Holborn Hill, Snow Hill, or Tower Hill in London. 
The houses do not entirely hide the natural features of ground. 
The Capitol is still a considerable eminence upon the ground plan 
of the city. The acccumulation of earth at the basis of these 
elevations has been very partial. In some places the ancient 
pavements, as that of the Via Sacra, are upon the present surface. 
In other places the soil has accumulated several feet. The correct 
inference perhaps should be, that the sites and ground around the 
ancient buildings, and the ancient streets themselves never were 
leveled. The natural hollows of the ground were built upon or 
paved upon, and these have been overlaid irregularly by accumu- 
lations of soil. The difference of level between the Forum and 
the Capitol can never have been very different from the present. 
We see the old bottom level of the Forum in the pavement, and 
it can scarcely have been so great as between the Castle of.Edin- 
burgh and the Grass-market. A fall from the Tarpeian rock might 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 381 

have broken a man's neck sufficiently well, if the ground below 
was clear, and originally it was, perhaps, hollowed out, or natu- 
rally lower, as ground at the foot of a steep precipice usually is. 
The Tiber is a muddy or rather clayey stream, as yellow and 
thick as the water of a clay-pit in a brick-field. It is deep and 
rapid, but not wide, the bridge of St. Angelo crossing it in three 
small arches, with two others having water only occasionally under 
them. It is deep and rapid enough to have been a good natural 
defence on one side for a town, and the population has always 
been principally on the left bank, between the river and the hills 
or eminences included within the walls. 

What is there in the situation of this city, upon and around 
some small eminences on a plain by the side of a small river, 
which could give her that mastery over the neighbouring little 
states and towns that led to the subjugation of Italy, and of the 
known world ? Some principle in the physical advantages of the 
position of this city must have occasioned the continued advance 
of its power. The only very obyious advantage is, that the in- 
habitants of this position had a constant supply of water, had a 
defensible retreat on these hills, protected on one side by a river 
not forcfeble, and had the command of the whole plain of the 
Campagna, as a cavalry power acting fro|p a centre. The other 
cities and states conquered in the early period of the Roman pro- 
gress were all situated, probably for the sake of drinkable water, 
among the hills which skirt the Campagna, and could only draw 
their forage, pasturage, and even their bread corn, from this plain, 
the higher grounds around it being more adapted for vines, and 
olive trees, than grain crops. Rome, from the hour of her founda- 
tion, occupied the best natural position for defence and aggression, 
had imder her eye and command the routes up to the higher 
grounds by which the supplies of grain and forage to the other 
little states must pass, and they could only march into the Cam- 
pagna with cavalry, or deploy troops in it, by a few routes known 
and seen from Rome. The amalgamation of every little rival 
city with Rome, and the voluntary removal of the inhabitants to 
Rome, indicate that her position commanded their military move- 
ment and food. Their supply of water has evidently not been so 
permanent and certain a^ that of Rome ; and their forage and 
grain more exposed to destruction. 

Here, as in every site of early inhabitation, water appears to 



382 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

have been the mother of society. Water has been the first of the 
common gifts of nature to ail human beings whicli has been 
claimed and appropriated by individuals. Water has been property 
long before land was appropriated, and it must, from the first day 
of the existence of the human race, have, in the greater part of 
the world been appropriated by a community exclusively to them- 
selves ; and its use, from the first, been subject to laws and regu- 
lations, as a property vested in the community, and not in any 
individuals of it. Civilization, society, government, law, appear 
to have originated in those countries which are partially watered, 
that is, have water only at certain watering places on great rivers, 
or at perpetual springs, but have it not at all seasons generally in 
the land. Necessity must from the first day of human existence, 
have led men to congregate at those particular watering spots, 
and to appropriate them, as a society, to their own peculiar use. 
In those countries in which water is abundant everywhere and at 
all seasons— as in North America— no such natural want has forced 
men into social union, and they still wander uncivilized, uncon- 
nected, and without government or law, unless to the extent that 
self-defence obliges them to unite in nomade tribes. Civilization 
comes to such countries from without, by their subjugation, or 
their intercourse with more civilized people. Civilization itself has 
risen from the necessity of supplying a natural want — has sprung 
from the waters. In India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Mexico, the 
earliest civilized countries of the old and new continents, and 
those in which men have first congregated in societies, water, 
from the very nature of the countries, must have been appropriated, 
and been a cause of law, government, and regulation, from the 
very first day of the existence of human beings in them. I con- 
ceive this to be a more reasonable conjecture upon the progress of 
man to social union, and government, than the fanciful theory 
adopted by philosophers, of men passing through three distinct 
states, from the hunter state to the shepherd state, from the shep- 
herd state to the agricultural ; and thence to the appropriation of 
land, and the adoption of law and government. There is no 
tendency of, nor motive for, men in any one of these states to pass 
into the other. The hunter and shepherd require the range of a 
hundred hills. Society, or even neighbourhood, is adverse to their 
subsistence. We see, in fact, that in North America and in Asia, 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. ' 383 

people ill the hunter or shepherd state never have gotbej'ond that 
state. 

If we consider the remains of ancient art, the cyclopeaii walls 
in Italy and Greece of an age prior to the Etruscan, and long 
prior to the Roman or the Grecian, the mounds of earth containing 
sculptured remains and gold ornaments of races of men forgotten 
even by tradition, which are found in the forests of America and 
in the steppes of Asia— and, above all, if we consider the intel- 
lectual remains of former civilization, more imperishable than the 
material, tiie structure and relations of the religion, and of the lan- 
guages of the rudest tribes, connecting them with a state of great 
mental development in those who first constructed those systems, 
we must come to the conclusion that the shepherd and hunter states 
are the retrograde, and not the progressive steps of the human 
race from one stage of civilization to another; that the wandering 
uncivilized tribes of mankind now in the hunter or shepherd state, 
in America and Asia, are the expiring remnants of an earlier 
civilization, and of varieties of our species which have originally 
stood on afar higher material and intellectual grade of social exist- 
ence than at present. 

It is no idle speculation to inquire into the origin of property. 
Hundred-weights of books have been written on subjects less 
important. Is the right of property derived from society ? Does 
the individual derive his right to appropriate, to individualize a 
portion of land, water, or other of the common gifts of nature to 
the human species, from a previously existing right of the whole 
community to that property and to parcel and grant it out to its 
several individual members, luider regulations and conditions for 
the general good of the community ? Or is society derived from 
the right of property ? Have social union, law, and government 
originated from individuals seizing on, and appropriating (o their 
own exclusive use, portions of the common gift of nature for the 
subsistence of the species, and then meeting, and forming society 
for the mutual defence, by arms, law, and government, of their 
individualized property ? Idle as such questions or speculations 
may appear, they are not without their practical application at the 
present day. The right of every man to do with his own as he 
likes, and the right of a government to interfere, either in the use 
and application of property, or in the general arrangement of pro- 
perty in the social economy of a country — as, for instance, to alter 



384 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

the distribution of the land by abolishing the rights of primogeniture 
in heritage — depend, in the abstract, upon this question, Is society- 
instituted for the protection of previously existing rights of pro- 
perty, or is property derived from previously existing rights vested 
in society ? 

What was the real amount of civilization among the ancient 
Romans, understanding by civiUzation the physical and moral 
good enjoyed by the mass of the community ? This must not be 
measured by their literature, architecture, and statuary, The 
state of the fine arts in a country is usually taken as the measure 
of the civilization of its inhabitants, but it is altogether a falla- 
cious test ; for a taste for the fine arts, and great perfection in them, 
may exist with great barbarism. The Russian noble at the pre- 
sent day makes his slaves perform difficult pieces of music, or 
copy with wonderful precision the paintings of the best masters 
— just as the Roman artists, many of them slaves also, copied the 
Grecian— yet without the slightest advance of the operative, or 
of the community around him, in the comforts and conveniences 
of civilized life, by the effect of his labour. The buildings, baths, 
fish-ponds, statues, the amphitheatres, and temples of ancient 
Rome belonged either to the public, or to a very small master- 
class in the community, and the population which produced them 
was not in any degree benefited, that is, raised to a higher physical 
or moral condition, by their own labour. This is the great and 
essential difference between slave labour and free labour. The 
slave labourer may be, and no doubt very often is, as well fed, 
clothed, and taken care of, as the free labourer. The American 
slave owner, the old West Indian planter, the Russian noble tell 
us so, and many travellers confirm their account. But the labour 
of the slave does not tend to raise his condition. It carries no 
improvement in it upon his moral state. His physical state, even 
when it is equal in comfort and well-being to that of the free 
labourer, is not the fruit of his own labour. His civilization is 
not advanced by his industry. The public works, theatres, and 
works even of lUility, and the agriculture itself of the Romans, 
appear to have been all carried on for the gratification and use of 
a small master-class by the animal power of men working in 
slavery and suffering in slavery. The saving of labour — an 
object which has led to the perfection of labour in all the useful 
arts in our state of society — was no object in their state of society. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 385 

All was done by slaves, ai\d great multitudes of them at com- 
mand, and by overseers or freed men entertained about the fami- 
lies of the great. Any thing may be produced, if waste of time, 
labour, human life, and happiness, be left out of the estimate of 
the cost of production. But this is not civilization, although a 
country may be filled by it with temples, arches, statues, and am- 
phitheatres. There is this radical difference between the civiliza- 
tion of the fine arts and the civilization of the useful arts — the 
taste for the fine arts is gratified by the simple recipience of the 
senses. The individual is quiescent in receiving his gratification. 
The taste is principally a gift of nature connected with the or- 
ganization of the individual, cultivated with little trouble, and 
to be enjoyed in slavery or in freedom. No exertion of his is 
required to enable him to enjoy fine music, fine paintings, fine 
statuary, and no benefit to others is involved in his enjoyment. 
But the taste for the products of the useful arts can only be 
gratified in freedom, and by free exertion, mental and bodily, of 
the individual in a free social state. Industry, forethought, and 
social co-operation, besides the free use of property, are all neces- 
sary to enable the individual to gratify, or even form his taste for 
the useful arts, even in their most simple applications, as in his 
clothing, lodging, furniture. 

The importance of the fine arts as humanizing influences in 
society has been much overrated. Such objects and tastes as 
belong to the fine arts are necessarily confined to the highest ranks 
of the community. No other class of society was thought of by 
scholars at the revival of literature and of a knowledge of the fine 
arts. It was the public, it was the sole patron of intellectual merit, 
and what influenced or gratified this small class, which scarcely 
extended beyond the court-circle of the monarch, was raised to 
exaggerated importance, and made a standard for all excellence ; 
and the prejudice continues to this day. But in reality the great 
mass of society, the most moral, influential, and intellectual, and 
in every sense the most civilized portion of it in Europe, the mid- 
dle classes, never, generally speaking, saw an object of the fine 
arts in their lives, have no taste for any of the fine arts unless as 
these may be connected with their trades and occupations. Unless 
the fine arts are carried on as useful arts, that is, as trades repaying 
free independent industry, they neither add to nor denote civiliza- 
tion in a community ; and then they add to it less than the useful 



386 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

arts, because from their nature they employ less industry. They 
depend entirely on the individual, on his single talent, or genius, 
or execution alone ; the useful arts on the co-operation of many 
individuals. Music, painting, statuary, and architecture as far as 
it is a fine art distinct from masonry, employ but the head and 
hand of the one artist. If the humanizing influences of the fine 
and the useful arts may be measured by the civilization of those 
who cultivate them, the professors of the fine arts stand, as a class 
in society, below, in morality and intelligence, the class of manu- 
facturers or merchants engaged in the production or circulation of 
the objects of the useful arts. If the comparative influence on 
civilization of the fine and the useful arts be measured by the state 
of society most favourable to their development, we find it is only 
under despotic governments that the money, labour, and time of 
the community can be concentrated, and commanded into the 
production of objects of the fine arts ; and it is under free govern- 
ment only, and the security of property and its wide diff'usion in 
society, that the useful arts prosper. 

The amount of independent industry in a country, that is, of the 
free labour, bodily or mental, which the labourer exchanges for 
his own gratifications, physical and moral, seems to be the true 
measure of its civilization ; and not its temples, palaces, statues, 
pictures, music. Can Bavaria be compared to Scotland in the 
enjoyments of civilized life by all the community, although the 
country is drained and squeezed to produce the frippery in the 
fine arts which adorns Munich? The ancient Romans, as a peo- 
ple, have enjoyed little of this independent industry, as the mass 
of the working producing population was in slavery. They 
wanted those objects of the acquired tastes which both give em- 
ployment to and are the gratifications of industry in modern society. 
Annihilate in Europe as gratifications generally diffused, and as 
incentives to industry, the use of silk, cotton, linen, and shoe-lea- 
ther for ordinary clothing materials, the use of sugar, coffee, tea, 
tobacco, distilled liquors, spiceries, and our ten thousand other 
modern stimulants or condiments for the gratification of the palate, 
the use of glass for the eyes, of steam and all machinery for the 
hands, of books, sciences, knowledge, religion for the mind, and 
leave only bread, wine, oil, and wool, as the main materials on 
which industry is employed, slave labour as the means of pro- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 387 

daction, and triumphal arches, temples, amphitheatres, statues, 
public games, and spectacles of gladiators killing each other, and 
of wild beasts tearing to pieces slaves — as the intellectual gratifi- 
cations — and we get probably pretty near to a just idea of the 
civilization of the mass of the people of ancient Rome in the most 
flourishing period of the fine arts. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE POPE'S BENEDICTION. — VATICAN LIBRARY. — TOMB OF CLEMENT 
XIIL— HORSES OF MONTE CAVALLO.— ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULP- 
TURE. 

The pope's benediction of the people, from a balcony on the 
outside of St. Peter's, is a fine sight. Troops, body-guards, yeo- 
men in red and yellow clothing of the costume of Henry VHPs 
time, splendid equipages, gaudily dressed servants, ladies, officers 
of all countries, monks, priests in great variety and contrast of 
habiliments, a moving mass of uniforms, feathers, and lace, and an 
assemblage of 30,000 people not wedged into a tight, immovable 
heap, but undulating in the vast area in front of St. Peter's, form 
a very fine sight — very fine to talk about afterwards — but, to 
say the truth, a little tedious to wait upon. Sight-seeing is the 
traveller's dull duty. 

The illumination of the cupola of St. Peter's, which took place 
the same evening, is also a fine sight— and is really a magnificent 
effort of art. The outline of the dome, the ribs, belts, windows, 
and all that would be drawn with the pencil in an outline sketch, 
are first illuminated in the early part of the evening with a steady 
but not brilliant light. This is the finest effect in the scene. 
The cupola looks like some vast thing suspended from the hea- 
vens. The lines of light give its form, and all between them is 
in utter darkness. On the first stroke of eight o'clock the lights 
start instantaneously into brilliancy, and all is brightness and 
dazzle. They have changed in figure as well as in splendour, 
and now form belts of diamond-shaped forms round the dome. 
This magically quick change — done while the first three strokes 
of eight are striking— is effected by a number of exercised peo- 
ple, one to every fifty lights, with blinds and cordage, to unveil 
them at once. The effect of all this glare is not so fine as before. 
The flickering of the lamps destroy the delusion — it is no longer 
a distant steady light suspended from heaven, but a huge chan- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 389 

delier upon the ground. It is altogether a sight worth seeing. 
The pageantry of the holy week concluded with a grand display 
of iire-works from the castle of St. Angelo. But fire-works are 
poor things. What is a sky-rocket to the lightning ? or a Cathe- 
rine wheel fizzing upon a wall, over a yellow, muddy stream, to the 
silent moon hanging over the wide Atlantic ? 

Of all the tombs in the world the Vatican library is the most 
impressive. What labours of mind, what hopes, fears, excite- 
ments, irritations repose here ! The good, the bad, the dull, the 
bright, wisdom, folly, the poet's inspirations, the philosopher's 
speculations, the historian's researches— all the workings of the 
human intellect for ages sleep on these shelves, preserved, yet 
forgotten ! In this cemetery of the mind, as in that of the body, 
the tomb is of more value than what it incloses. The decoration 
of the rooms, the book-cases, the vast extent of librarian-palace 
— palace in size and magnificence — make this the most princely 
establishment in the world. It is an establishment for show, and 
forming part of the suitable splendour of the head of the Catholic 
church, not a library foj; use. You see no books, the book-cases 
having doors of fine wood well locked — no readers, no catalogues: 
you must believe, because you are told that all the literary pro- 
ductions of every age, worth preserving, are entombed in these 
magnificent rooms. We are told many things harder to be be- 
lieved than this. 

You go to the library and galleries of the Vatican through a 
long gallery, in which a vast number of ancient inscriptions, on 
tombstones principally, are arranged on each side, and built into 
the walls. From the rude, irregular way in which the letters are 
cut in ancient Roman inscriptions, even upon triumphal arches, 
and under statues, and such important objects, it must be inferred 
that people of the middle class among the Romans — the archi- 
tects, sculptors, and the mass of the people who employed them 
or saw their works — were not generally acquainted with the use 
of letters, with writing and reading. The letters of inscriptions, 
even upon objects of importance, are rudely shaped, of unequal 
sizes, with frequent omissions among them, with the words some- 
times running into each other, sometimes with intervals in the 
middle, as if two distinct words ; the lines not straight— in short, 
such work as a stone-cutter would make at the present day in 
copying the strokes of an inscription laid before him without his 



390 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

having any knowledge of their use as letters ; and such work as 
only a public unacquainted with the use of letters would tolerate 
upon objects of art of the highest perfection. It is probable that 
the sculptor of the Minerva did not know his A, B, C. Great 
perfection in execution in sculpture, painting and music, is not 
incompatible with gross ignorance. Phidias may have been as 
unlettered as a Russian slave. A common millwright, to exer- 
cise his trade, must be able to read, write, calculate, and think. 
The one is the civilization of the fine arts, the other of the useful 
arts. 

In St. Peter's, a tomb of Clement XIII, the work of Canova, 
attracts the general admiration of the travelling world, or rather 
the figures of a Muse, Genius, or somebody of that family,* reclin- 
ing upon a beautifully sleeping lion, on one side of the pediment 
— the figures of the size of life — and on the other side of it a full- 
length female of the same family, with a ditto also sleeping most 
naturally ; and on the top sits the Pope in marble, in full costume, 
as good as alive, and as large. The figure of the reclining genius, 
and the sleepiness of the lion, are, beyond doubt, wonderfully fine, 
and well expressed ; but where is the beauty or grandeur of con- 
ception in putting a fine naked figure reclining, tout ct son aise, 
upon a wild beast fast asleep ? The beauty of the execution 
cannot redeem the poverty of the conception. What is there in^ 
the idea and combination grand, poetical, agreeable, natural, or 
comprehensible ? The parts and execution may be ever so ex- 
quisite, — the idea is common-place, weak, unpoetical, and worth- 
less. I admire this work, therefore, not as an effort of mind and 
imagination, but of chisel and mallet. In contrast with this finely 
executed piece of sculpture, and in that respect worthy of all ad- 
miration, look at the horses of the Monte Cavallo. These are 
pieces of ancient sculpture ascribed, but without any sufficient 
reason, to Phidias and Praxiteles. The horses are like nothing 
equinine. Their necks are thicker than their bodies. If such 
shaped horses ever existed, they must have been a cross between 
a Berkshire pig and a Shetland pony. Yet what fire, what life, 
what poetry in the attitudes of these uncouth animal bodies in the 
act, apparently, of dashing over a precipice ! The very unwield- 
iness itself of the shapes brings out the energy of the attitudes. 
And the human figures, the Castor and Pollux, top-heavy figures 
like boatswain's mates, all head and arm and breadth of shoulder 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 391 

above, and no corresponding breadth of loin, or buttock, or thighs 
and legs, to support such upper works of nien — yet their attitudes, 
and grouping with those hippopotami-like horses, are poetical, are 
grand, and give grandeur and effect to the parts. In Canova's 
work the parts give the value to the conception : here the concep- 
tion throws its grandeur over the parts. Who thinks here of the 
finish, and ariistical execution ? If fine forms of men and horses 
were the things intended by these ancient sculptors, they have, in 
truth, succeeded marvellously ill. But evidently these poet-artists 
never intended to give a fac-simile of a horse down to his shoe 
nails, and of a man down to his epaulets and pigtail. They give 
an idea, like the poet's, made out in part, and in no more com- 
pleteness than enables the imagination of the reader or spectator 
to work out the rest. The heads of the horses, the feet in the air, 
have the last touch of art ; these parts live, and are in all the 
energy of action. The rest is in sketch, is purposely blocked out 
only. The spectator's own mind throws over the whole work 
the spirit, character, and energetic action of the heads. Canova's 
work in this tomb proceeds upon a different principle— the very- 
embroidery on the hem of the pope's garment is carefully made 
out — the tailor who sewed it might depone to every stitch— and, 
with what I humbly conceive to be a littleness of taste, a corner 
of the robe is brought over the ledge of the pedestal, to show the 
fidelity of the representation of the piece of cloth. Those ancient 
sculptors have not even put bits or bridles on their magnificent 
horse-heads. The attitude and fire of what is represented tell that 
these horse-like \animals are in the act of springing, but are re- 
strained. The attitudes of the human figures tell that they restrain. 
Buckles and bridles are purposely left out ; because unnecessary 
to convey their conceptions in all their force to the spectator's 
mind. In modern sculpture, these minute details would be la- 
boriously brought in, and exquisitely finished ; overloading the 
conception intended to be conveyed, and weakening its impression. 
This appears to be the great difference between ancient and modern 
sculptors. The ancients were poets in the art, and philosophers 
who had analyzed the principles on which e|fect is produced, as 
well as great practical artists. In practical excellence in the art, 
in expressing physical beauty and grace of attitude in the female 
or the male figure, Canova, and the school of Canova, perhaps, 
equal the ancients. The Venus of Canova is equal, in the esti- 



392 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

mation of many, to the Venus de Medici, as a representation of 
ideal beauty and grace ; but neither of these great works of art 
represent mind. Physical beauty and grace of attitude in the 
utmost ideal perfection are all they aim at. The Niobe, the Aris- 
tides at Naples, the Moses of Michael Angelo, and many busts 
here, belong to a higher class of composition than the works which 
merely express the perfections of shape, form, and attitudes of the 
human body, which are called beauty and grace. They express 
also mental power, intelligence, working of mind, energy. In 
this class of works, the modern school of sculpture has productions 
not sufficiently estimated ; as, for instance, the basso-relievo by 
Tenerani of two Christians, a brother and sister, exposed to a 
tiger in the Flavian amphitheatre. The expression of devotion 
and resignation mingled with fear, in the two principal figures, is 
great. The tiger, and the slave letting him out of his den, are 
superfluous in the composition, as the story tells itself in the ex- 
pression of the two principal figures. The Laocoon is considered 
one of the finest productions of the art of sculpture ; because it 
represents not merely physical perfection of the human frame in 
action, but the physical sufferings. It does so. The countenance 
and whole attitude and frame of Laocoon express the utmost 
agony of bodily pain ; but the Niobe cowering over her child in 
the attitude to hide or cover it, the Aristides speaking with dignity 
and energy, are works of a higher class, expressing mental suffering 
or acting. The false object of almost all modern sculptors to at- 
tain in their statues the highest ideal oi physical beauty and grace 
has the consequence, that in proportion as they approach the ideal 
they lose the natural. They lose all individuality. The figures 
round the tomb of an Indian Begum might do for Minervas, or 
Hebes, or Venuses, or Madonnas, or whatever the artist may 
choose to call them, by merely hanging about them the appropriate 
ornaments and appendages. The heads, figures, attitudes, and 
expression will do for anything. In modern painting and statuary, 
what you see, are a few Grecian figures performing a scene. They 
are actors of all work. Walk on to the next piece of canvas, or 
piece of marble, you find the same countenances, the same figures, 
attitudes, costumes, and expression, representing persons, events, 
or conceptions of a totally different character, age, country, and 
people. Raphael gives you a touch of reality in his most ideal 
figures. They are each of them individualized. In the fresco 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 393 

painting, for instance, of a Venus pleading to Jupiter, in the Far- 
nese palace, there is reverence, mingled with anxiety and grace, 
in the countenance of the pleading figure — and it is an individual's 
face and form. It is not the faultless, inexpressive Grecian coun- 
tenance, belonging to a class rather than an individual, such as 
represents Venus in the works of other painters. Apollos,Venuses, 
Apostles, Madonnas have, in fact, become, both in marble and on 
canvas, conventional figures, wliich the spectator refers not to 
any natuml type of the beautiful within his own feeling, nor to 
any indivdualization of nature's excellencies; but to an acquired 
taste — a taste which a century ago would have represented and 
have admired an Apollo in a full-bottomed wig, and a Venus in a 
hoop-petticoat and flounces, and now represents and admires them 
in costumes, attitudes, and style of countenances, quite as widely 
apart from the natural in any human beings we recognize, or have 
fellow-feeling with. Until sculptors and painters emancipate 
themselves, as our poets have done, from this classical imitation 
and prestige, and follow natural instead of conventional types, as 
Michael Angelo and Raphael have done, the sign-painter and 
gingerbread-baker may claim brotherhood in their arts. 



26 



CHAPTER XXI. 

CHURCH OF ROME.— CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 

The power of ancient Rome in the meridian of her glory was 
not so wonderful as her subsequent and her present dominion 
over the mind of man. Physical power we can understand. 
We see its growth. We see its cause along with its effect. We 
see armies i;i front, and civil authority in rear. But this moral 
power, this government over the mind extending through regions 
more vast and distant than ever the Roman arms conquered, is 
the most extraordinary phenomenon in human ~ history. The 
Papist claims it as a proof of the Divine origin and truth of his 
doctrine. The Protestant and the philosopher inquire what 
principles of human origin give this power over the minds of 
men such wonderful extension and durability. To compare the 
machinery of each establishment, the Catholic and Protestant, 
the means by which each of these churches works upon the 
human mind — an inquiry altogether distinct from any investiga- 
tion or comparison of the scriptural foundations of their different 
doctrines — would be a noble subject for the philosopher and his- 
torian, and one belonging strictly to metaphysical and political 
science, not to theology. It would bring out many of the most 
hidden springs of mental action, would elucidate many of those 
great moral influences which have agitated nations, and which 
are sometimes dormant but never extinct in society ; and would 
explain some of the most important historical events and social 
arrangements of Europe. A few observations tipon the present 
state and working of the machinery of each church, as they 
appear to the traveller in passing through Catholic and Protestant 
lands, may turn the attention perhaps of the philosophic inquirer 
to this vast and curious subject. 

Catholicism has certainly a much stronger hold over the human 
mind than Protestantism. The fact is visible and undeniable, 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 395 

and perhaps not iinacconnfable. The fervour of devotion among 
these Cathohcs, the absence of all worldly feelings in their reli- 
gions acts, strike every traveller who enters a Roman Catholic 
church abroad. They seem to have no reserve, no false shame, 
false pride, or whatever the feeling may be, which, among us 
Protestants, makes the individual exercise of devotion private, 
hidden — an affair of the closet. Here, and everywhere in Ca- 
tholic countries, you see well-dressed people, persons of the higher 
as well as of the lower orders, on their knees upon the pavement 
of the church, totally regardless of and unregarded by the crowd 
of passengers in the aisles moving to and fro. I have Christian 
charity enough to believe, and I do not envy that man's mind 
who does not believe, that this is quite sincere devotion, and not 
hypocrisy, affectation, or attempt at display. It is so common, 
that none of these motives could derive the slightest gratification 
from the act — not more than a man's vanity could be gratified 
by his appearing in shoes, or a hat, where all wear the same. 
In no Protestant place of worship do we witness the same intense 
abstraction in prayer, the same unaffected devotion of mind. 
The beggar-woman comes in here and kneels down by the side 
of the princess, and evidently no feeling of intrusion suggests itself 
in the mind of either. To the praise of the Papist be it said, no 
worldly distinctions, or human rights of property, much less money 
payment for places in a place of worship, appear to enter into 
their imaginations. Their churches are God's houses, open alike 
to all his rational creatures, without distinction of high or low, 
rich or poor. All who have a soul to be saved come freely to 
worship. They have no family pews, or seats for genteel souls, 
and seats for vulgar souls. Their houses of worship are not let 
out, like theatres, or opera houses, or Edinburgh kirks, for money 
rents for the sittings. The public mind is evidently more reli- 
gionized than in Protestant countries. Why should such 'strong 
devotional feeling be more widely diffused and more conspicuous 
among people holding erroneous doctrines, than among us Pro- 
testants holding right doctrines ? This question can only be solved 
by comparing the machinery of eacii church. 

Although our doctrine be right, our church machinery, that is, 
our clerical establishment, is not so effective, and, perhaps, from 
the very reason that our doctrine is right, cannot be so efTbclive as 
that of the Catholics. In the Popish church the clergyman is 



396 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

more of a sacred character than it is possible to invest him with 
in our Protestant church, and more cut off from all worldly affairs. 
It is very up-hill work in the Church of England, and still more 
so in the Church of Scotland, for the clergyman to impress his 
flock with the persuasion that he is a better man, and more able 
to instruct them, than any other equally pious and equally well- 
educated man in the parish, whose worldly circumstances have 
given him equal opportunity and leisure to cultivate his mind ; 
and in every parish, owing to the diffusion of knowledge, good 
education, and religious feeling among our upper and middle 
classes, there are now such men. The Scotch country clergyman 
in this generation does not, as in the last, stand in the position of 
beitig the only regularly educated, enlightened, religious man 
perhaps in his whole congregation. He has also the cares of a 
family, of a housekeeping, of a glebe in Scotland, of tithe in Eng- 
land, and, in short, the business and toils, the motives of action, 
and objects of interest that other men have. It is difficult, or in 
truth impossible, in our state of society, to impress on his flock 
that he is in any way removed from their condition, from their 
failings or feelings; and it would be but a delusion if he succeeded, 
for he is a human being in the same position with themselves, 
under the influences of the same motives and objects with them- 
selves in his daily life. 

The machinery! of the Roman Catholic church is altogether 
different, and produces a totally different result. The clergyman 
is entirely separated from individual interests, or worldly objects 
of ordinary life, by his celibacy. This separates him from all - 
other men. Be their knowledge, their education, their piety, 
what it will, they belong to the rest of mankind in feelings, in- 
terests, and motives of action, — he to a peculiar class. His ava- 
rice, his ambition, or whatever evil passions may actuate him, lie 
all within his own class, and bring him into no comparison or 
collision with other men. The restriction of celibacy led, no doubt, 
to monstrous, disorder and depravity in the age preceding the 
Reformation — an age, however, in which gross licentiousness of 
conduct and language seems to have pervaded all society — but it 
is a vulgar prejudice to suppose that the Catholic clergy of the 
present times are not as pure and chaste in their lives as the mi- 
married of the female sex among ourselves. Instances may occur 
of a different character, but quite as rarely as among an equal 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 397 

number of our unmarried females in Britain of the liigher edu- 
cated classes. The restriction itself of celibacy is unnatural, and 
in our church is properly done away with ; because we receive 
the elements of the Lord's Supper as symbolical only, not as being 
anything else than bread and wine in virtue of the priestly con- 
secration. The Papists, who receive the elements as transubstan- 
tiated by the consecration, require very naturally and properly 
that the priest should be of a sanctified class removed from human 
impurity, contamination, or sensual lusts, as well as from all worldly 
affairs, as far as human nature can by human means be. Both 
churches are right, and consequent in their usage and reasoning, 
according to their different doctrines. The Puseyites of the Churcli 
of England alone are inconsequent ; for if they claim apostolic 
succession, and apostolic reverence and authority for the clerical 
body, they should lead the apostolic life of celibacy, and repudiate 
their worldly spouses, interests, and objects. 

But our Scotch clergy, placed by the Reformation in such a 
totally different religious position as to the nature of their func- 
tion, are wrong in expecting a peculiar veneration, and in chal- 
lenging a peculiar sanctity for their order. As a sacred order, or 
class, they ceased to exist, or to have influence founded upon any 
sound religious grounds, when the distinction which made them a 
peculiar class in the eyes and feelings of mankind, the distinction 
in their sacramental function, and consequent separation in all 
worldly affairs between their class and other men, ceased and 
was removed. The veneration and sanctity which each indi- 
vidual works out for himself by his personal character and con- 
duct in his clerical functions alone remained. As a member of 
an order, he could take nothing, and de facto receives nothing. 
Superior education, and the prestige from Catholic times, kept up 
a lingering distinction in our Scotch country parishes in the last 
generation; but it seems a hopeless claim now in an educated 
age, for members of a profession not better educated than men of 
other professions not separated by any peculiar exclusive religious 
function from the ordinary business, interests, motives, and modes 
of living of other well-conducted men, to obtain a separate status 
in society analogous to that of the popish clergy. They have an 
elevated, and, if they will so apply the word, a sacred duty to per- 
form along with the ordinary duties of life ; but they form no distinct 



398 NOTES or a traveller. 

sacred class, or corporation, like the tribe of Levi among the 
Israelites, or like the Catholic clergy among the papists, having 
religious duties or functions which none can perform but its 
members, and to which they are essential. Some of our clergy in 
Scotland in the present day v/ould insinuate that they are, by 
virtue of their ordination, or of their duties, a sacred order or class 
in the community ; but this is a papistical pretension so entirely 
exploded by our Reformation, that those of the Scotch church 
who make it are afraid to speak out. The genuine spirit of Cal- 
vinism, as adopted by the Scotch people, acknowledges no such 
order of priesthood, admits no such principle. A presbytery has 
no claim, like the Roman Catholic bishops, to sacred apostolic 
power of ordination. Their examinations and licenses regard 
only the education, moral and religious character, and fitness of 
the individual to become a preacher in the established slate- 
church, and to serve that particular charge to which he is called; 
but confer no spiritual gifts, no peculiar sacred powers; and for 
the good reason, that, in our Presbyterian faith, no such gifts or 
powers are reserved for one class of men more than another, but 
scriptural knowledge, piety, sanctity, and all religious gifts, powers, 
advantages, and abilities, stand equally open to all men to be at- 
tained through faith, and their Bibles. As an influential machine 
in society, ou^- clerical establishment cannot, therefore, from its 
nature, have such power over the mind as the Roman Catholic 
priesthood. The latter appears also to have taken up a new and 
more efficient position since the settlement of Europe after the 
revolutionary war. Catholicism has had its revival — and its 
priesthood has used it adroitly. 

By the French revolution many of the most glaring and revolt- 
ing abuses of the Roman Catholic church were abolished. In no 
Catholic country, for instance," not ^ven in Rome, is the interfer- 
ence of the church, or the clergy, in the private concerns, or civil 
affairs, opinions or doings of individuals, at all tolerated. Its 
establishments, and powers discordant with the civil authority, 
have everywhere be(!*n abrogated. Monks and nuns are no 
longer very numerous, except in Rome and Naples, and are no- 
where a scandal ; and the vast estates of these establishments 
have generally, over all the Continent, been, in the course of the 
last war, confiscated and sold to pay the public debt of the state. 
In Tuscany, for instance, of 203 monastic establishments, viz., 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 399 

133 of monks, and 69 of nuns, only 40 remain with means for 
their futuue support and continuance, and 162 receive aid from 
government, until the existing members who survive the confis- 
cation of their former estates die out. Tiie rich Neapolitan 
monasteries have, in the same way, been reducedMn wealth and 
numbers. In France and Germany, the Catholic clergy, in gene- 
ral, are by no means in brilliant circumstances. The obnoxious 
and useless growth of the Catholic church establishment has, in 
almost every country, been closely pruned ; and their clergy are, 
in reality, worse provided for than the Protestant. The effects of 
the Revolution have been^to reverse the position of the clergy of 
the two churches; and to place the Catholic now on the vantage 
ground in the eye of the vulgar of the continental populations, of 
being poor and sincere, while the Protestant clergy are, at least, 
comfortable, and well paid for their sincerity. The sleek, fat, 
narrow-minded, wealthy drone is now to be sought for on the 
Episcopal bench, or in the prebendal stall of the Lutheran or An- 
glican churches; the well-off, comfortable parish minister, yeoman- 
like in mind, intelligence, and social position, in the manse and 
glebe of the Calvinistic church. The poverty-stricken, intellectual 
recluse, never seen abroad but on his way to or from his studies 
or church duties, living nobody knows how, but all know in the 
poorest manner, upon a wretched pittance in his obscure abode — 
and this is the popish priest of the 19th century — has all the 
advantage of position with the multitude for giving effect to his 
teaching. 

Our clergy, especially in Scotland, have a very erroneous im- 
pression of the state of the popish clergy. In our country churches 
we often hear them prayed for as men wallowing in luxury, and 
sunk in gross ignorance. This is somewhat injudicious, as well 
as uncharitable ; for when the youth of their congregations, who, 
in this travelling age, must often come in contact abroad with the 
Catholic clergy so described, find them in learning, liberal views, 
and genuine piety according to their own doctrines, so very diffe- 
rent from the description and the describers, there will unavoid- 
ably arise comparisons, in the minds especially of females and 
young susceptible persons, by no means edifying or flattering to 
their clerical teachers at home. Catholic priests and monks, at 
the time of the Reformation, may have been all that onr Scotch 
clergy fancy them still to be ; but three centuries, a French revo- 



400 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

lution, and an incessant advance of intelligence in society, make 
a difference for the better or worse in the spirit even of clerical 
corporations. Our churchmen should understand better the 
strength of a formidable adversary who is evidently gaining 
ground but too fast upon our Protestant church, and who, in this 
age, brings into the field zeal and purity of life equal to their 
own, and learning, a training in theological scholarship, and a 
general knowledge superior, perhaps, to their own. The educa- 
tion of the regular clergy of the Catholic church is, perhaps, posi- 
tively higher, and, beyond doubt, comparatively higher, than the 
education of the Scotch clergy. By positively higher, is meant 
that, among a given number of popish and of Scotch clergy, a 
greater proportion of the former will be found who read with ease, 
and a perfect mastery, the ancient languages, Greek and Latin, 
and the Hebrew and the Eastern languages connected with that 
of the Old Testament — a greater number of profound scholars, a 
greater number of high mathematicians, and a higher average 
amount of acquired knowledge. Is it asked of what use to the 
preacher of the Gospel is such obsolete worldly scholarship } The 
ready answer is, that if the parish minister of the Scotch church 
can no more read the works of the Evangelists, Apostles, and 
early Fathers easily and masterly in the original Greek than any 
other man in the parish, knows them only from the translations 
and books in our mother tongue, to which every reading man in 
the parish has access as well as he, and if he has not had his 
mental faculties cultivated and improved by a long course of ap- 
plication to such studies as mathematics, the dead languages, 
scholastic learning, ancient doctrines in philosophy and morals, 
the ancient history of mind and men, and the laws of matter and 
intelligence as far as known to man, on what grounds does he 
challenge deference and respect for his opinions from lis his parish- 
ioners ? We are educated up to him. How can he instruct a 
congregation who know him to be as ignorant as themselves ? 
Has the ordination of a presbytery conferred on the half-educated 
lad any miraculous gifts or knowledge ? If he be as ignorant as 
his hearers of these higher branches of knowledge, which few have 
his leisure to arrive at, what is it he does know ? What is the 
education, what the acquirements on which a presbytery not better 
educated than himself have examined and licensed him?. He is 
like an apothecary ignorant of chemistry, compounding his medi- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 401 

cities from a book of formuloe left in his shop by his predecessor, 
and without any knowledge of the nature and properties of the 
substances he is handUng. It may be said that the standard of 
clerical education in Scotland at the present day is as high as it 
ever was — as high as in any generation since the Reformation. 
It may be so ; but if the public has become educated up to that 
standard, the clergy of the present day have lost the vantage 
ground of superior education and learning, and consequently of 
moral influence as teachers, as much as if the standard of clerical 
education had itself been lowered. 

In the nature, also, of our Presbyterian church service there is 
an element of decay of moral influence, produced by the general 
advance of society in education, intelligence, and religious know- 
ledge. From the days of the Apostles to the Reformation, all in- 
struction was oral, all knowledge was conveyed by word of mouth 
from the teacher to his pupils. But printing and the diff'usion of 
books have reduced to insignificance this ancient mode of com- 
municating knowledge, 'especially in abstract science. It is con- 
fined now to the branches of knowledge connected with natural 
substances, and the operations on them. Knowledge is imparted 
to the mind now, through the eye, not through the ear ; and the 
book read, referred to, considered in the silence of the closet, has 
in all studies, sciences, public and private affairs, and intellectual 
acquirement, superseded, even in the universities, the duty and 
utility of the orator, lecturer, or speaker. Reading has reduced 
oral instruction to utter insignificance in pure science and in pub- 
lic affairs ; and the ancient, but imperfect, mode of conveying 
information by word of mouth is banished to the nursery. Th.e 
influence of the oral teacher naturally must decay along with the 
utility and importance of his occupation ; and this principle of 
decay of the moral influence of oral tuition reaches the Presby- 
terian pulpit. 

It is unfortunate, also, for the influence of the Scotch Calvinis- 
tic church, that its service consists exclusively of extemporary 
effusions or temporary compositions. These composed in haste 
by men of moderate education, and often of small abilities, have 
to undergo the comparison in the mind of an educated and read- 
ing congregation, with similar compositions, prayers, or sermons, 
prepared carefully for the press by the most able and learned 
divines. The moral influence resting solely on such a church 



402 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

service cannot be permanent. As a machinery, the English church 
is founded on a more lasting and influential basis ; its established 
forms of prayer, unobjectionably good in themselves, not placing 
one minister or his compositions in competition with another, or 
with other similar compositions, in the public mind— the almost 
mechanical operation of reading the service well or ill being all the 
comparison that can be made between two clergymen in the 
essential part of the church duty. The competition, also, or com- 
parison of any other compositions of the same kind, however 
excellent, with the old liturgy, can never occur in the public mind 
in England ; because the liturgy has use and wont, antiquity, repe- 
tition from childhood to old age in its favour, and is interwoven 
with the habits of the people by these threads, in all their religious 
exercises. 

The comparative education of the Scotch clergy of the present 
generation, that is to say, their education compared to that of the 
J-'cotch people, is unquestionably lower than that of the popish 
clergy compared to the education of their ^oeople. This is usually 
ascribed to the popish clei'gy seeking to maintain their influence 
and superiority by keeping the people in gross ignorance. But 
this opinion of our churchmen seems more orthodox than cha- 
ritable, or correct. The popish clergy have in reality less to lose 
by the progress of education than our own Scotch clergy ; be- 
cause their pastoral influence and their church services being 
founded on ceremonial ordinances, come into no competition or 
comparison whatsoever in the public mind with anything similar 
that literature or education produces ; and are not connected with 
the imperfect mode of conveying instruction, which, as education 
advances, becomes obsolete, and falls into disuse, and almost into 
contempt, although essential in our Scotch church. In Catholic 
Germany, in France, Italy, and even Spain, the education of the 
common people in reading, writing, arithmetic, music, manners, 
and morals, is at least as generally diff'used, and as faithfully 
promoted by the clerical body, as in Scotland. It is by their own 
advance, and not by keeping back the advance of the people, 
that the popish priesthood of the present day seek to keep 
ahead of the intellectual progress of the community in Catholic 
lands ; and they might, perhaps, retort on our Presbyterian clergy, 
and ask if they, too, are in their countries at the head of the 
intellectual movement of the age ? Education is in reality not 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 403 

only not repressed, but is encouraged by the popisli church, and 
is a mighty instrument in its hands, and ably used. In every 
street in Rome, for instance, there are, at short distances, public 
primary schools for the education of the children of the lower 
and middle classes in the neighbourhood. Rome, with a popula- 
tion of 158,678 souls, has 372 public primary schools witli 482 
teachers, and 14,099 children attending them. Has Edinburgh 
so many public schools for the instruction of those classes ? I 
doubt it. Berlin, with a population about double that of Rome, 
has only 264 schools. Rome has also her university, with an 
average attendance of 660 students ; and the Papal States, with 
a population of 2^ millions, contain seven universities. Prussia, 
with a population of 14 millions, has but seven. These are 
amusing statistical facts— and instructive as well as amusing — 
when we remember the boasting and glorying carried on a few 
years back, and even to this day, about the Prussian educational 
system for the people, and the establishment of governmental 
schools, and enforcing by police regulation the school attendance 
of the children of the lower classes, France sent her philosophers 
on a pilgrimage to Berlin to study the manifold excellences of the 
Prussian school machinery, and to engraft them on her own 
" liberty of the people ;" and not a few of the most enlightened, 
liberal, and benevolent of our own upper classes, sighing over 
the supposed ignorance and vice of the multitude, wish that our 
government, even at the expense of a little demoralizing con- 
straint and infringement of the natural rights of parents, would 
take up the trade of teaching, make a monopoly of it as in Prus- 
sia, with a state-minister of public instruction to manage it, and 
enforce by law and regulation the consumpt of a certain quantity 
in every family out of the government shops. Our statesmen 
were wiser than our philanthropists, or rather the common sense 
and sense of their civil and moral rights among the people were 
more powerful than both; and society with us has been wisely 
left by our legislature to educate itself up to its wants — a point 
beyond which ho school-mastering can drive it with any useful 
moral or religious result, and up to which, as in all free action 
for meeting human wants, the demand will produce the supply. 
The statistical fact, that Rome lias above a hundred schools 
more than Berlin, for a population little more than half of that 
of Berlin, puts to liight a world 



404 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

national education carried on by governments, and their moral 
effects on society. Is it asked, what is taught to the people of 
Rome by all these schools ? — precisely what is taught at Berlin, 
— reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, languages, re- 
ligious doctrine of some sort, and,-«above all, the habit of passive 
submission in the one city to the clerical, in the other to the 
government authorities. The priesthood and the state function- 
aries well know that reading and writing are not thinking ; that 
these acquirements and all the branches of useful knowledge be- 
sides, which can enter into the education of the common man in 
ordinary station, only increase his veneration for, and the social 
influence of that higher education which the mass of the commu- 
nity has no leisure to apply to, and which always must be confined 
to a few — to a professional class. The flocks will follow the more 
readily for being tamed, if the leaders only keep ahead of the 
crowd. 

There is an evident reaction in the application of the old maxim, 
that superstition and despotism must be founded on ignorance. In 
Austria, in Prussia, in Italy, it is found that useful acquirements 
and knowledge do not necessarily involve thinking, and still less 
acting ; that, on the contrary, they furnish distraction and excite- 
ment to the pubhc mind, and turn it from deeply considering, or 
deeply feeling, real errors in religion, or practical grievances in 
civil life. Education is become the art of teaching men not to 
think. When a governn;ient, a priesthood, a corporate body of 
any kind gets hold of the education of the people without com- 
petition, even in the most minute portion, as in a village school, 
this is invariably the result of their teaching. 

It is not difficult to account for the great number of schools — 
consequently the great diffusion of those acquirements which are 
called education— in Rome. The same cause acts in the same way 
in Edinburgh. There is a great demand for that sort of labour 
which may be called educated labour to distinguish it from me- 
chanical labour, but which has as little influence on the moral or 
mental condition of the individual as shoemaking, or chipping 
stones on the highway, — and the demand produces the supply. 
Church servants of all kinds, from the cardinal down to the sing- 
ing boy, must be able to read ; and the great amount of living to 
be found at Rome in the church, produces the demand for instruc- 
tion in the qualifications. In Edinburgh, and generally in Scotland, 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 406 

the same demand for educated labour in the colonies, in mercantile, 
or legal, or medical professions, aiid in the Scotch church, produces 
a similar supply. Those who raise the supply are, in both cities, 
generally the young men intended for the priesthood; but in 
Rome the clergy occupy themselves more systematically, and 
more authoritatively, more in the Prussian style, with the educa- 
tion of the people, than they have legal power to do with ns. 
They hold the reins, and are the superintendents, if not the actual 
teachers, in all these schools. It is very much owing to the zeal 
and assiduity of the priesthood in diffusing instruction in the 
useful branches of knowledge, that the revival and spread of 
Catholicism have been so considerable among the people of the 
Continent who were left by the Revolution, and the warfare 
attending it, in that state that if the Catholic religion had not con- 
nected itself with something visibly useful, with material inte- 
rests, would have had nothing to do with it. The Catholic clergy 
adroitly seized on education, and not, as we suppose in Protestant 
countries, to keep the people in darkness and ignorance, and to 
inculcate error and superstition ; but to be at the head of the great 
social influence of useful knowledge, and with the conviction that 
this knowledge —reading, writing, arithmetic, and all such acquire- 
ments — is no more thinking, or an education leading to thinking, 
and to shaking off the trammels of popish superstition, than play- 
ing the fiddle, or painting, or any other acquirement to which 
mind is applied. 

Since the peace of Europe was established in IS 15, very im- 
portant events in church history have taken place, although 
scarcely noticed by our clergy, occupied too exclusively in the 
petty politics of their own establishments. The revival of religious 
feeling in every country of Europe after the war-feeling, after the 
moral fever, and excitement of the revolutionary period were ex- 
tinguished, and the embers of the flame trodden out at Waterloo, 
is one of the most striking characteristics of the times which have 
succeeded ; and the diflerent directions this universal revival of 
religion has taken in the different churches of Europe, one of the 
most eventful for future generations. The continental people 
had a religion to choose at the end of the last war. How have 
the two churches of Europe availed themselves of this peculiar 
state of the European mind ? The Protestant church is shaken 
to the foundation in her ancient seats, Germany and Switzerland, 



406 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

and, as a body politic, has lost, instead of gained, influence. The 
overthrow of the very name and form of Protestantism in Prussia 
by the late king, and the defection even of the clergy, from her 
doctrines in Switzerland, Germany, and other Protestant coun- 
tries, have thrown great moral weight into the scale of the Roman 
CatFiolic church. The European people had a religion to choose, 
'and found the Protestant church in its very centre, Germany, in 
a state of transition and transformation into the new shaped 
thing — the Prussian church ; and from the almost total silence of 
the abject Prussian population, both clergy and flocks, at the 
.change, it was naturally believed that the change was undeniably 
necessary ; and people naturally attached themselves to that church 
which acknowledges no want of change, and carries with it the 
moral weight of stability and time-hallowed forms. In the con- 
tinental Protestant church, the revived flame of religion has not 
taken a church direction, but has shown itself in schisms, discord 
of rites and opinions, the extinction in Prussia of the doctrines and 
forms of the two great branches of Protestantism, and the adop- 
tion, even by the clergy in Germany and Switzerland, of views 
which would have been considered formerly in their churches as 
deistical, unitarian, socinian. In Britain, also, the Protestant 
church has got into a false position. The clergy, both in the 
Church of England and in the Church of Scotland, have been at- 
tempting to unite the two opposite poles — power and popularity 
— and in their struggles for church power, and church influence, 
liave lost the lead in the religious revival of the age. It is not the 
church in either country now that sustains, or directs, or even 
represents the religious sentiments of the people, but the offsets 
from the clerical body acting independently of the church, and 
forming an evangelical laity. The scholars have outgrown the 
teachers; and the teachers, instead of advancing with and leading 
the progress of the age, are in danger of becoming superannuated 
appendages on the religion of the people, sustained by it, not sus- 
taining it ; nor capable of directing it in the vast educational and 
missionary efforts which the religious sentiments of the people 
are making by their own agents, while their clergy are battling 
for church wealth, or church power. 

The Roman Catholic church, with its more effective machinery 
of a priesthood, has held the bridle, and guided the public mind 
in this great revival of religious feeling in Europe, more cleverly 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. - 407 

than the Protestant. It has evidently entered more fully info the 
spirit of the age, has seen more clearly what to give up, and what 
to retain, in the present intellectual state of the European mind, 
and has exerted its elasticity to cover with the mantle of Catholic- 
ism, opinions wide enough apart to have formed irreconcilable 
schisms and sects in former ages. Monkisli institutions, onerous v 
calls upon the time or purse of the common man, relic-veneration, 
vows, pilgrimages, auricular confessions, penances, and proces- 
sional mummery, appear to be silently relaxed, or relinqaished, 
wheresoever the public mind is too advanced for them. The old 
Catholic clergy and their kind of Catholicism appear to have died 
out, or to be placed in an inactive state, and young men of new 
education and spirit to have been formed, and set to* work: and 
these men have taken up their church as they found her, shorn of 
temporal and political power in almost every country, and of all 
social influence in a great part of Europe, and even with the 
means of living reduced to a very scanty pittance in France, and 
other Catholic lands, and have to set to work from this position, 
without looking back, with the zeal and fervency which perhaps 
only flourish in poverty. It is so far from being on the ignorance 
of the people this new school of the Catholic priesthood founds 
the Catholic church, that you hear sermons from them which 
might be preached to any Christian congregation. Tiie general 
doctrines of Christianity are as ably inculcated as from our own 
pulpits, and the peculiar or disputable doctrines of the Popish 
church seem, by some tacit understanding, to be left out of the 
range of their subjects. They are not only free from the puerili- 
ties of doctrinal points, but also from the affectation, so common 
in the Protestant churches abroad, of pjreaching only the moral, 
and not the religious, doctrines of the Gospel. 

Besides this greater efficiency of the machinery of the Romish 
clun-ch, the Catholic religion itself has the apparent unity of belief 
of all its adherents in its favotir. This unity is apparent only, 
not real ; but it has tlie same moral efiect on the minds of the 
unreflecting as if it were real. The Catholic religion adapts 
itself, in fact, to every degree of intelligence, and to every class 
of intellect. It is a net which adapts its meshes to the minnow, 
and the whale. The Lazarone on his knees before a child's doll 
in a glass case, and praying fervently to the bellissima Madonna, 
^is a Catholic, as well as Gibbon, Stolberg, or Scblcgel : but his 



408 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

Catholicism is little, if at all, removed from an idolatrous faith in 
the image before him, which may in its time have represented a 
Diana of Ephesus, or a Venus. Their Catholicism was the result 
of the investigation of philosophic minds, and which, however 
erroneous, could have had nothing in common with that of the 
ignorant Lazarone. I strolled one Sunday evening in Prussia into 
the Roman Catholic church at Bonn on the Rhine. The priest was 
catechising, examining, and instructing the children of the parish, in 
the same way, and upon the same plan, and with the same care to 
awaken the intellectual powers of each child by appropriate ques- 
tions and explanations, as in our well conducted Sunday schools 
that are taught on the system of the Edinburgh Sessional School. 
And what of all subjects was the subject this Catholic priest was 
explaining and inculcating to Catholic children ; and by his fami- 
liar questions, and their answers, bringing most admirably home 
to their intelligence ? — the total uselessness and inefficacy of mere 
forms of prayer, or verbal repetitions*of prayers, if not understood 
and accompanied by mental occupation with the subject, and the 
preference of silent mental prayer to all forms — and this most 
beautifully brought out to suit the intelligence of the children. 
I looked around me, to be satisfied that I was really at the altar 
steps of a popish church, and not in the school room of Dr. Muir's 
or any other well-taught Presbyterian parish in Edinburgh. Yet 
beside me, on her knees before the altar, was an old crone mum- 
bling her Pater Nosters, and keeping tale of them by her beads, 
and whose mind was evidently intent on accomplishing so many 
repetitions, without attaching any meaning to the words. Between 
her Catholicism, and that of the pastor and of the new generation 
he was teaching, there was certainly a mighty chasm, a distance 
that, in the Protestant church, or in a former age, would have 
given ample room for half a dozen sects and shades of dissent — 
a difference as great as between the Puseyite branch of the Church 
of England, and the Roman Catholic church itself. But the mantle 
of the Catholic faith is elastic, and covers all sorts of differences, 
and hides all sorts of disunion. Each understands the Catholic 
religion in his own way, and remains classed as Catholic, without 
dissent, although, in reality, as widely apart from the old Catholic 
church, as ever Luther was from the pope. Our Protestant faith 
sets before all men distinctly one and the same doctrine and 
belief, the same principles, the same Christian knowledge, ideas, 

I 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 409 

and objects. There is, consequentl}', distinct ground for secta- 
rianism, and dissent, in the very nature of the Protestant church. 
These are also abstract ideas which are set before men, to which 
every mind must raise itself, and which, from the very nature of 
the human mind, cannot be comprehended so readily, or dwelt 
upon so long, and so ferventlyjyespecially by those untrained to 
mental exertion, as the material ideas of crucifixes, images, 
relics, paintings, and ceremonies, with which Catholicism mixes 
up the same abstract ideas. These material objects act like Ley- 
den jars in electricity upon the devotion of Catholics : and every 
one seems to adjust to his own mental powers and intelligence, 
the use of this material machinery for quickening his devotion. 
With some, the invocation of the Virgin Mary, and the Saints, is 
considered but as a necessary, logical deduction from the great 
doctrine of mediation. If the mediation of the Son with the 
Father, be efficacious, the mediation of the Mother, who must 
have been the most perfect of created beings, as the chosen vessel 
for our Redeemer's conception, with her Son, who in filial piety 
and affection as in all other virtue, was perfection, must, accord- 
ing to their not unspecious deduction, be efficacious alsor The 
ora pro nobis, the invocations addressed to the Virgin Mary, the 
Apostles, Saints, and those who were either personal friends and 
companions of our Saviour when on earth, or are supposed to 
have been acceptable to him by their lives or suffi3rings, are 
founded on this deduction from the principle of mediation, and 
from the excellency of the virtue of our Saviour. The mediatory 
nature of these invocations is with others, again, almost entirely 
lost sight of and forgotten, and it becomes a direct idolatrous 
worship to these secondary mediators equal to what we pay to 
the great Mediator himself: and as these are at best but human 
beii'igs little removed from our own condition, the mind is able to 
dwell without exertion or fatigue upon them, their merits, and 
their works ; and is excited to a fervency of devotion not attain- 
able by the human mind from the contemplation of the sublime 
abstract truths of our religious belief. Our belief is the working 
of judgment, theirs of imagination; and this fervency of feeling 
is, in the construction of our mental system, more nearly allied to, 
and nourished and excited by imagination, than judgment. In 
this way we must account for the undeniably greater devotional 
fervour of Catholics than of Protestants. 
27 



410 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

The elasticity of the Catholic church adapting itself to every 
mind, instead of raising every mind up to it, is the great cause of the 
advance of Catholicism in the present day, among the enlightened, 
as well as the ignorant classes; and the great cause of the small in- 
fluence of Catholicism in raising the moral and intellectual condition 
of mankind, and advancing the civilization of society. It is a cap 
that fits every head, for every head can stick it on in some fashion 
or other. Its most absurd doctrine, as that of the real presence 
in the elements of the Lord's Supper, is plausibly enough deduced 
from the plain words of Scripture — " This is my body" — not, this 
is the symbol of my body— and the natural objection of the evi- 
dence of our senses contradicting the supposed transubstantia- 
tion, is met by the argument of the unceasing divine power to 
operate a miracle even every day and hour upon every altar, the 
incompatibility with any rational idea of divine power, of the 
doctrine that the age of miracles is past, that what the divine 
power worked at one time it cannot or will not work at another, 
although the same necessity exists, and the insufficiency of our 
senses as a test of miracle, the disciples themselves having been 
blind to the miracle of the loaves and fishes, although seeing and 
assisting in it. This fits some heads. Others find the consub- 
stantiation of the Lutheran not at all more inteUigible than the 
transubstantiation of the Catholic, and acquiesce in the older faith 
of the two. The majority believe that which requires rio think- 
ing. The French revolution left the minds of men in a rude, 
uneducated state, more adapted to receive the material impres- 
sions of the Catholic faith, the ideas suited to a low, neglected, 
religious, and moral education, than to comprehend and embrace 
the higher and more abstract truths of Protestantism. The mili- 
tary spirit of a generation born and bred in wars and revolutions, 
and accustomed to see all distinction and honour resting not upon 
moral worth and good principle, but upon success, promotion, 
and outward decoration, could, when a reaction and revival arose 
in religious feeling among them, more easily go over into that 
church in which similar merits and similar emblems are admitted, 
and supersede mental exertion. 

The period of the French revolutionary war, undoubtedly, 
lowered the tone of moral and religious sentiment in Europe. 
In the events and present results of that vast movement, so many 
enterprises were successful in which all acknowledged moral and 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 411 

religious principles were set aside, and so many agents and 
participators in iniquitous events attained, and still to this day- 
retain, all honour and social consideration, although gained in 
defiance of all moral principles of conduct, that wrong-doing has 
been kept in countenance, and success has been allowed to legal- 
ize, and cover from the judgment of posterity, the most flagitious 
acts of public historical personages. This is the deepest stain 
upon the literature of our times. Who in all wide Europe, 
which of the many historians of the French revolution — Scott, 
Alison, Thiers — who, who has raised his voice in the cause of 
moral right and integrity ? Who has applied to the test-stone 
of just moral principle the men and acts he is describing to pos- 
terity as great and brilliant examples of human conduct? Who 
has asket;! the French generals, marshals, and princes, the living 
individuals who now revel in the eye of the world as the highest 
characters of the age, who has asked them, one by one, how did 
ye amass your immense wealth ? Is it honestly come by ? Is 
it the savings of your daily pay and allowances in your profes- 
sional stations ? or is it money gained by secret participation 
with your own contractors and commissaries, or wrung by forced 
gifts, requisitions, unmilitary robbery, in a word, from towns, 
ancient institutions, and innocent suffering individuals ? Where 
got ye your services of gold and silver plate? your collections of 
Flemish, Italian, and Spanish paintings ? Were these not forced, 
plundered from their lawful owners, without even the show of 
purchase ? And who has asked the Buonaparte family, who 
are now vapouring about the world, attempting to set it on fire, 
how came ye to be great men ? Your brother was a great 
soldier, but ye have neither inherited nor achieved greatness. 
Ye have no talents among you, either for civil or military affairs, 
that would be at all out of place in your original vocations upon 
three-legged stools, as country procurators, or behind the counter 
in the honest calling of grocers and drapers, in your native 
little town of Ajaccio. What, in the name of common sense, 
entitles you to be crowing upon the top of the world as princes 
and counts ? And where got ye your immense wealtii ? Was 
it honestly earned in Ajaccio ? Ye cannot even say it was mili- 
tary pillage and peculation. It was pilfered out of the taxes of 
those countries over which ye were sent to reign by your bro- 
ther, like so many Sancho Panzas— the most impudent mockery 



412 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

of national rights and public principle ever attempted among 
European nations. It belongs, every dollar of it, to the people 
of those countries. Honest Sancho came penniless away from 
his government of Barataria, but ye left Holland, Westphalia, 
and Spain with full pockets. His moral feeling told him to leave 
his subjects without profiting by a farthing of their revenues 
Ye offered to subscribe millions to the funeral of the emperor, 
and have expended millions in silly attempts to kindle a flame in 
Europe for your ambitious projects, while the money you are 
wasting belongs really, and on just, correct, moral principle, to 
the people from whom it was squeezed, who earned it by their 
industry, paid it over most grudgingly to your own or your bro- 
ther's tax-gatherers for the public service, or civil list, or privy 
purse of their state, and to whom, individually, or collectively as 
a state, every shilling you have does in common honesty be- 
long. When the great men of the earth arranged and restored 
at the Congress of Vienna the political and territorial interests of 
kings and states, why did they not follow out the principle, and 
restore the moral interests of Europe also ? Why did they not 
make the vultures who were gorged with the pillage of Holland, 
Germany, Spain, Italy, of every city from Hamburgh to Bern, 
and from Bern to Cadiz, and to Naples, disgorge individually 
their unmilitary booty, and restore the property to the countries, 
towns, institutions, and private persons, from whom it had been 
extorted contrary to all principles of civilized warfare ? They 
were not eagles, — these were but the foul birds of prey which 
follow the eagle to feed upon the carcass he strikes down in his 
flight. Political or military profligacy in high station and com- 
mand is more ruinous to public morals than private vice, because 
it sets principle at defiance openly, and not in a corner, and 
showing the homage to virtue of attempting to hide itself; but 
braving, in high and conspicuous social positions, the control of 
morality and public opinion. The Congress of Vienna, in restor- 
ing something like a balance of power, and a monarchical shape 
to the Continent, only skinned over the wound inflicted on so- 
ciety—made compensation only to kings, and some royal dynas- 
ties, not to the people; restored nothing of what is of more import- 
ance than forms of government,— nothing of the moral principle 
which had been pushed out of its proper place and influence in 
society, by the impunity, unmerited honours, and impudent as- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 413 

sumption of dignity, permitted to the most shameless rapine that 
ever disgraced the history of civilized people. M. Thiers, the 
late minister of France, is now in Germany, writing history, for- 
tunately for mankind, instead of making history on the banks of 
the Rhine. He is visiting all the cities and localities of Germany 
which were the theatres of important events and memorable 
exploits, to collect, it is said, materials for a great historical work 
from the commencement of the French revolution. Has M. 
Thiers the moral courage to write such a history as history in 
this age ought to be written ? Will he bring to the unerring 
test-stone of moral principle, every act, every character, every 
man he is dealing with as an historian ? Will he unmask artd 
denounce to posterity, the unprincipled adventurers, pillagers, 
and marauders, whom accident, good fortune, military success, 
and the bravery of their troops, threw up into high and conspi- 
cuous stations, and who are figuring to this day in the eye of the 
world, the first of men? Will he restore the moral tone to 
society which has been lost in France, by the unmerited success 
and splendour of such men ? Or will he only give the world a 
classical work— a fine imitation of the ancient historians, bril- 
liant descriptions of marches, battles, intrigues, causes and results 
of events, fine-spun, imaginary, eloquent, modeled upon the 
manner and style of Thucydides or Tacitus ; a work of talent, 
but not of historical philosophic truth ; a work which every- 
body will praise, few will read, and nobody believe, or be the 
better for ; a work, in short, of leading articles, in which every 
victory is unparalleled, every successful general a hero, and glory 
a cloak for the most infamous deeds and characters? The road 
is open to M. Thiers, and Germany is the country which con- 
tains much of the materials, to produce the most influential and 
truly philosophical history of an eventful period, which the mo- 
ralist, or the historian teaching morality by example, ever had 
before him. Will M. Thiers have the moral courage to take this 
road ? 

The results at some future period of the singular moral and 
religious state of the European mind which has followed the 
revolutionary paroxysm of the beginning of this century baflle 
conjecture. The Protestant religion, existing, it may almost be 
said, only in detached corners of the world, and there torn into a 
hundred sects and divisions, and the clergy of her two branches 



414 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

occupied in unseemly squabbles for power and property, and not 
leading, nor, in public estimation, capable of leading, the religious 
revival among Protestant Christians, nor of meeting and refuting 
the learning and theological scholarship of professed infidel writers 
— the popish church advancing stealthily, but steadily, step by 
step, with a well-organized, well-educated, zealous, and wily 
priesthood at the head of and guiding the religious revival in her 
domain of Christianity, and adapting herself to the state of the 
public mind, and the degree of social and intellectual development 
in every country, from the despotism of Naples, to the democracy 
of New York — the moral tone of society, the power of moral and 
religious principle over conduct, the weight and value of right or 
wrong in public estimation, deranged, the influence of public 
opinion on the moral conduct of public men lowered, by the 
countenance given by governments to individuals who should be 
branded in the history of this age as unprincipled depredators 
setting all moral and international law. at defiance in their mili- 
tary and political acts — these are elements in the religious, moral, 
and political condition of European society, which, together with 
the change in its social economy by the new distribution of pro- 
perty, must make every thinking man feel that the French revo- 
lution, as a vast social movement, is but in its commencement. 
We are but living in a pause between its acts. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE OLIVE TREE— ITS EFFECTS IN SOCIAL ECONOMY.— MAIZE.— POTA- 
TOES.— FLORENCE.— DIVISION OF LAND IN TUSCANY.— STATE OF THE 
PEOPLE.— STATE OF THE CONTINENTAL AND ENGLISH PEOPLE COM- 
PARED. 

The inhabitants of tiie gloomy little towns in the Papal states, 
Civita Castellana, Otricoli, Narni, Terni, their squalid nothing-to- 
do appearance as they saunter in hstless idleness about their doors, 
a prey to ague and ennui, are sadly in contrast to their bright snnny 
land, and its glorious vegetation. Their country produces every- 
thing — everything but industry ; and man flourishes as a moral 
intelligent being only where industry is forced upon him — and 
civilization and well-being with industry — by natural circum- 
stances — by the want, not the abundance of natural products. 
Truly the plenty of their country is their curse. Suppose every 
kail-yard in Scotland had a tree growing at the dyke-side, like the 
old pollard sauglis we usually see there, and requiring as little 
care or cultivation, and that from this tree the family gathered its 
butter, suet, tallow, or an oil that answered perfectly all the house- 
hold uses of these substances, either as a nutritious adjunct to 
daily food in their cookery, or for soap, or for giving light to their 
dwellings — all, in short, that our grass-lands and dairies, our 
Russia trade, our Greenland fisheries, produce to us for household 
uses — would it be no blessing to have such trees ? Such trees are 
the gift of nature to the people here in the south, and are bestowed 
with no niggard hand. The olive-tree flourisiics on the poorest, 
scarpy soil, on gravelly, rocky land, that would not keep a sheep 
on ten acres of it, and a single olive-tree will sometimes yield from 
a single crop nearly fifty gallons of oil. Is this a curse, and not 
a blessing? Look at the people of all olive-growing countries — and 
the question is answered. The very productiveness of nature in 
the objects of industry naturally stifles industry, Tiie countries 
which produce industry, are in a more civilized and moral condi- 



416 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

tion, than the countries which produce the objects of industry. 
The Italian governments— the Neapohtan, the Papal, the Aus- 
trian, the Sardinian — are, perhaps unjustly, blamed for the squalor, 
idleness, and wretchedness of the Italian people. No government 
can give incitement to industry in commerce, agriculture, or manu- 
factures, where soil and climate produce, without any great or 
continuous exertion of man, almost all that industry labours for. 
The people of Italy, and of all the south of Europe, probably 
never can be raised to so high a social state as the people of the 
north of Europe, if the measure of a high social state be the diffu- 
sion of industry and all its moral influences, and of the useful arts 
and all their gratifications — nor the people of the north raised to 
that of the Italian people, if the general taste for, and cultivation 
of the fine arts, be the measure of the social condition and civil- 
ization of mankind. 

The olive-tree is but one of the many fruits of the earth which 
supply the natural wants of man here without any incessant de- 
mand upon his toil, and which lap him in an indolent contentment 
with a low social condition. The maize, or Indian corn, is, both 
physically and morally, the equivalent among the populations of 
the south to the potatoe among those of the north. It is curious 
that both these additions to the subsistence of man became gene- 
rally cultivated about the same period, both being of unknown or 
unnoticed origin, and the one, as if in compensation, flourishing 
best where the other succeeds but imperfectly.. Maize is almost 
limited to the climate of the vine. Potatoes, indeed, succeed, 
although less perfectly both as to quality and quantity, within the 
climate of the maize and vine, but practically enter little into the 
supply of food in those countries in which maize succeeds. The 
first introduction of both these plants is involved in some obscurity. 
The potatoe is usually stated to have been brought home by Sir 
Walter Raleigh from America, in the reign of James ; but we have, 
in the Merry Wives of Windsor, the weighty evidence of Sir John 
Falstaff himself against this opinion. " Let the sky rain potatoes." 
— The potatoe must have been commonly known to pit, boxes, 
and galleries in Queen Elizabeth's time, to have admitted of such 
a familiar allusion to it. The maize, from its French name' pro- 
bably, bled de Turquie, is supposed by some to have come to 
Europe from the East — to have been the fruit of the crusades, 
and the principal fruit now remaining of those expeditions. When 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 417 

we consider the vast populations now subsisting principally on 
maize, the potatoe itself will be found to yield in importance to 
it. The amount of subsistence from a small space of land is great, 
and where the vine is cultivated, the maize is often cultivated be- 
tween the rows of vines as a kind of secondary crop. The culti- 
vation of maize acts upon the amount and condition of the popula- 
tion — on their numbers and habits, precisely as that of potatoes. 
The moral results have been the same from both. Where the land 
is not the property of the cultivators, but of a nobility, as in the Sar- 
dinian, Neapolitan, and Papal states, the clieap and inferior, but 
plentiful food, in proportion to the land and labour bestowed on its 
production, has brought into existence a great population miserably 
ill off. The difference of value between their inferior food of 
maize, and the value of other kinds of food, has only gone into 
the pockets of their land-owners, and their employers. Their con- 
dition has been deteriorated by a cheaper food increasing the 
quantity, and thereby reducing the value of labour to a rate equi- 
valent to a subsistence upon an inferior and cheaper diet. Where 
the land, again, is the property of the labourers themselves, as in 
Switzerland, in Tuscany, in France, the cheaper and inferior food 
leaves them more of a superior, higher-priced food for market, or 
more land to produce marketable provisions from ; and what they 
save in their diet goes into their purse. Thus, the very same 
cause, this cheap article of diet, produces thrifty, active, industri- 
ous habits among the Swiss, Tuscan, and French peasants, and 
lazy, trifling, lazaroni habits among the labourers of the Neapoli- 
tan, Papal, and Sardinian states. It is the possession of property 
that regulates the standard of living in a country, as in a single 
household, and fixes the general ideas and habits, with regard to 
the necessary or suitable, in diet, lodging and clothing: and this 
standard regulates the wages of labour. People who hare at 
home some kind of property to apply their labour to, will not sell 
their labour for wages that do not afford them a better diet than 
potatoes or maize, although, in saving for themselves, they may 
live very much on potatoes and mai2*. We are often surprised, 
in travelling on the Continent, to hear of a rate of day's wages 
very high considering the abundance and cheapness of food. It 
is want of the necessity or inclination to take work that makes 
day labour scarce, and, considering the price of provisions, dear 



418 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

in many parts of the Continent, where property in land is widely 
diffused among the people. 

Italy is a country of contrasts, of finery and rags tacked together; 
but none of its contrasts strike the political economist so much as 
the difference between Florence and Rome. All around Rome, 
and even within its walls, reigns a funereal silence. The neigh- 
bourhood is a silent desert, — no stir or sign of men, no bustle at 
the gates tell of a populous city. But without, within, and around 
the gates of Florence, you hear on all sides the busy hum of men. 
The suburbs of small houses, the clusters of good, clean, trades- 
man-like habitations, extend a giile or two. Shops, wine houses, 
market carts, country people, sma,rt peasant, girls, gardeners, 
weavers, wheelwrights, hucksters, in short, all the ordinary sub- 
urban trades and occupations which usually locate themselves in 
the outskirts of thriving cities, are in full movement here. The 
labouring class in Florence are well lodged ; and from the number 
and contents of the provision stalls in the obscure third-rate streets, 
the number of butchers' shops, grocers' shops, eating-houses, 
and coffee-houses for the middle and lower classes, the traveller 
must conclude that they are generally well fed and at their ease. 
The labourer is whistling at his work, the weaver singing over 
his loom. The number of book-stalls, small circulating libraries, 
and the free access of all classes to the magnificent galleries of 
paintings and statues, even to the collection in the Pitti palace 
itself, and the frequent use made by th? lower class of this free 
access to the highest works of art, show that intellectual enjoy- 
ments connected with taste in the fine arts — the only intellectual 
enjoyments open to or generally cultivated by those classes on the 
Continent who do not belong to the learned professions, and are 
by the nature of their government, debarred from political or re- 
ligious investigation and discussion — are widely diffused and gene- 
rally cultivated. No town on the Continent shows so much of 
this kind of intellectuality, or so much well-being and good conduct 
among the people. It happened that the 9th of May was kept 
here as a great holiday by the lower class, as May day with us, 
and they assembled in a kind of park about a mile from the city, 
where booths, tents, and carts with wine and eatables for sale, were 
in crowds and clusters, as at our village wakes and race courses. 
The multitude from town and country round could not be less 
than 20,000 people grouped in small parties, dancing, singing, talk- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 419 

ing, dining on tiie grass, and enjoying themselves. I did not see 
a single instance of inebriety, ill temper, or unruly boisterous con- 
duct ; yet the people were gay and joyous. There was no police, 
except, at the crossings of the alleys in the park, a mounted dra- 
goon to make the innumerable carts, horses, and carriages of all 
kinds and classes keep their files, and their own sides of the roads. 
The scene gave a favourable impression of the state of the lower 
classes in Tuscany. 

But why should the physical and moral condition of this popu- 
lation be so superior to that of the Neapolitans, or of the neigh- 
bouring people in the Papal states? The soil and climate and 
productions are the same in all these countries. The difference 
must be accounted for by the happier distribution of the land in 
Tuscany. In 1836, Tuscany contained 1,436,785 inhabitants, and 
130,190 landed estates. Deducting 7901 estates belonging to 
towns, churches, and other corporate bodies, we have 122,289 
belonging to the people — or, in other words, 48 families in every 
100 have land of their own to live from. Can the striking differ- 
ence in the physical and moral condition, and in the standard of 
living, between the people of Tuscany and those of the Papal 
states be ascribed to any other cause ? The taxes are as heavy 
in Tuscany as in the dominions of the Pope ; about 12*. 6d. ster- 
ling per head of the population in the one, and 12,s, 10^. in. the 
other. But in the whole Maremma of Rome, of about 30 leagues 
in length by 10 or 12 in breadth, Mons. Chateauvieux reckons 
only 24 factors, or tenants of the large estates of the Roman nobles. 
From the frontier of the Neapolitan to that of the Tuscan state, 
the whole country is reckoned to be divided in about GOO landed 
estates. Compare the husbandry of Tuscany, the perfect system 
of drainage, for instance, in the strath of the Arno by drains be- 
tween evSry two beds of land, all connected with a main drain — 
being our own lately introduced furrow tile-draining, but con- 
nected here with the irrigation as well as the draining of the land, 
— compare the clean state of the growing crops, the variety and 
succession of green crops for foddering cattle in the house all the 
year round, the attention to collecting manure, the garden-like 
cultivation of the whole face of the country, — compare these with 
the desert waste of the Roman Maremma, or with the papal 
country of soil and productiveness as good as that of the vale of 
the Arno, the country about Foligni and Perugia, — compare the 



420 > NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

well-clothed, busy people, the smart country girls at work about 
their cow's food, or their silkworm leaves, with the ragged, sallow, 
indolent population lounging about their doors in the papal do- 
minions, starving, and with nothing to do on the great estates ; 
nay, compare the agricultural industry and operations in this 
land of small farms, with the best of our large-farm districts, with 
Tweedside, or East Lothian — and snap your fingers at the wisdom 
of our Sir Johns, and all the host of our book-makers on agricul- 
ture, who bleat after each other that solemn saw of the thriving- 
tenantry-times of the war — that small farms are incompatible 
with a high and perfect state of cultivation. Scotland, or Eng- 
land, can produce no one tract of land to be compared to this 
strath of the Arno, not to say for productiveness, because that 
depends upon soil and climate, which we have not of similar 
quality to compare, but for industry and intelligence applied to 
husbandry, for perfect drainage, for irrigation, for garden-like 
culture, for clean state of crops, for absence of all waste of land, 
labour, or manure, for good cultivation, in short, and the good 
condition of the labouring cultivator. These are points which 
admit of being compared between one farm and another, in the 
most distinct soils and climates. Our system of large farms will 
gain nothing in such a comparison with the husbandry of Tuscany, 
Flanders, or Switzerland, under a system of small farms. 

Next to the distribution of property, the comparative well-being 
of the lower classes in Tuscany must be ascribed to the govern- 
ment. The ducal family, for some generations, have ruled as a 
liberal, paternal autocracy. The people have had no represent- 
ation in the legislature in a constitutional shape ; but they have 
been ably represented by their grand dukes themselves. The 
public measures of these wise, good, and truly great sovereigns, 
have been of a more decidedly liberal character than any repre- 
sentative legislature in Italy — taking into account the ignorance 
of the representatives, the influence of the priesthood, and the 
jealousy of Austria of any shadow of constitutional power'vested 
in the Italian people— could have ventured upon. The feudal 
privileges of the nobles, the municipal or corporation privileges 
which shackle the freedom of industry and trade, the restraints on 
civil liberty which in other parts of Europe keep the working 
producing classes in a state of thraldom to the government and 
its functionaries, have been long mitigated or abolished in Tus- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 421 

cany, by the liberal sovereigns, who, by rare good fortune, have 
ruled in succession for three generations, on the same enlightened 
and beneficent principles. But stability of good laws and good 
government depending upon the personal character of one man 
is a stake of fearful magnitude, when the well-being of a whole 
people depends upon it. One ill-educated, ill-advised successor, 
may undo all the good his predecessors have planned or accom- 
plished. Capital, commerce, manufacturing industry, the great 
agencies in the movement of modern society, will not trust them- 
selves freely upon so unstable a foundation. This will ever be 
the impediment to any considerable progress of Prussia, Austria, 
Tuscany, and all the paternally governed but autocratic states, in 
the development of the industry of their people. The prosperity, 
national wealth, and public spirit they aim at are inseparable 
from free institutions and legislative power lodged with the people 
themselves, and independent of the life or will of an individual. 
It would be a great misfortune to civilized Europe, if Prussia, 
with an autocratic government in which the public has no legal 
influence over the executive and its functionaries, were to attain 
any considerable manufacturing and commercial prosperity among 
nations. But this prosperity is so linked with that public confi- 
dence which can exist only in states in which the people have 
constitutional checks by their own representatives upon the acts 
of the government, that such a prosperity is unattainable by such 
a state as Prussia. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

FLORENCE TO BOLOGNA.— NOTES ON VENICE. 

The road from Florence to Bologna, about 25 leagues, crosses 
the Apennines, and from some points the sea on either side of 
the peninsula may be descried. The mountain scenery of the 
Apennine chain is by no means grand, picturesque, or beautiful. 
The elevation of the hills is so considerable that patches of snow- 
remain unmelted a great part of the summer ; but they are 
covered with a thick bed of clay soil in general, and the breaks 
made by torrents in beds of clay, the ravines, glens, and valleys 
of a yellow clay country, are seldom picturesque. In Italy alto- 
gether the tracts of country with fine natural scenery are rare. 
The towns, the works of art, the association of ideas with ancient 
history, and the luxuriant vegetation, and delicious climate, are 
the charms of Italy. The inhabitants near to Bologna do not 
partake of the wretchedness and indolence of the subjects of the 
papal states on the other side of the Apennines. They are evi- 
dently in a better condition. The land is more divided among 
the people in the legations of Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, Forli, 
than in the old original territory of the papal state in which the 
Roman pontiffs, and the princely families derived from them, are 
the land-owners. The people, also, had some constitutional rights 
in former times. 

The city of Bologna is remarkable from having an arched 
colonnade over the foot pavements on each side of the streets, a 
feature we are not accustomed to in northern towns. One walks 
under cover, but the effect is very gloomy. The climate must be 
rainy on this side of the Apennines, as all the cities have some of 
the principal of their old streets covered in on each side. Ferrara 
is a poor, deserted city of some 30,000 inhabitants, dwelling in a 
town built for 100,000. Side streets vacant, houses out of repair, 
whether-stained, and a world too large for their present occupants, 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 423 

grass-grown courts, ragged old people ; this is the picture of 
these ancient ItaUan cities. Padua is but a Utile more lively, with 
its university attended by 400 to 500 students. 

Venice, " the city risen from the sea," is the point to which the 
traveller hastens. It is perhaps the only city in the world which 
does not disappoint his expectations. It is, indeed, a dream-like 
creation upon the waters. Gondolas meet you at Fusina or 
Mestre, where you teave the carriage, to ferry you across to 
Venice, a distance of about four miles over a shallow lagune, in 
which the water-road is marked out by large piles. The gondola 
is a wherry, not so neatly built as the Thames wherry, with the 
upper half of a mourning hackney-coach, such as our undertakers 
send out in the rear of a burial train, stuck midships. In this the 
passengers sit, or recline on cushions, and may shut themselves 
up as in a coach with the glass-windows or the blinds. Two 
fellows at opposite ends and sides of the boat stand shoving the 
oars from them, and paddle along pretty quickly, avoiding the 
rimning foul of other gondolas with great dexterity, it is said ; 
but, in truth, there has been no great danger of running foul ^f 
others in the most frequented canals of Venice in this nineteenth 
century. In turning corners they might possibly bump against 
each other, and they give a short cry, to warn those coming down 
the water street to keep to the right or left. The gondolier has 
nothing of the seaman about him, and out of his own ditches, 
would, I suspect, be found a sorry boatman ; for the boat part of 
his conveyance is not so neat, nor so well kept as the coach part. 
Venice is not without her streets. There is access by land to 
every house in Venice. Thousands of little alleys, like Cran- 
bourne Alley in London, but not so wide, and bridges imiume- 
rable, make the landways not even very circuitous, and the great 
mass of the population go about their daily business as in other 
towns, through the streets. The gondolas are but the equivalents 
of the hackney-coaches of other cities. I question if a greater 
proportion of the 100,000 people living in the Tower Hamlets, 
Ratcliffe, Poplar, and on either side of the Thames in that district, 
be not upon the water in any given minute of the day, than of 
this 100,000 people. The lower classes, and even the gondoliers, 
have by no means the air of a seafiiring or even of an aquatic 
population. Our London boatmen, even those who ply above 
bridge, have all something jack-tarish about them. You would 



424 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

never mistake the man who lives by his boat among us for a 
terrestrial biped. Here, even about the dock-yard, or in the boats 
of the guardship, a frigate, you do not see a man in gait and ap- 
pearance like a seaman. But for the anchor in their caps, the 
men of their ship-of-war might be taken for dismounted dragoons 
as readily as for seamen. This want of characteristic appearance 
of any class of men among the populations of the south of Europe 
is remarkable. In northern countries, the soldier, the sailor, the 
husbandman, the tailor, the smith, the shoemaker, the mechanic, 
the gentleman, have, each class, something about them not to be 
mistaken, dress them as you will, — an appearance, a something 
peculiar to their craft or class. It is expressed, or expected, even 
in all paintings of the Dutch or English school. But in Italian hfe 
or pictures, nothing of this pecuhar characteristic appearance of a 
class is to be found. It is by his appendages of dress only you 
distinguish the soldier from the priest. It is probable, therefore, 
this characteristic something in the appearance does not exist in 
such intensity among southern populations. What is this some- 
thing ? I take it to be expression of mind strongly applied to one 
single object or train of objects, affecting in time the deportment, 
the language, the way of thinking, the manners, the very gait, 
face, and air of the individual, and making him brother-like to all 
others of the same occupation. In the countries in which less 
industry is required to obtain a living, the mind, the will, and even 
the muscles and positions of the body, are less constantly and in- 
tensely applied and exercised in the one way peculiar to the craft 
or profession by which the individual gains his living, and obtain 
no such preponderance over the ordinary appearance common to 
all. 

The canals of Venice are very clean for canals, but still they 
are canals smelling now and then of bilge water. There is a 
rise and fall of tide here of about three feet, but no current. It 
is singular that here, at the head of the Adriatic, there should be 
a visible ebb and flood, and none on the shores of the Mediter- 
ranean itself. A long island or bar of sand, called the Lido, 
runs across the head of this narrow sea, about three miles below 
Venice, leaving a passage between each end of it and the main 
land. The sea runs in by these passages or mouths, forming a 
lagoon behind this island, of considerable extent, but very shal- 
low (not above 18 feet in the deepest of the navigable channels). 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 425 

SO that the difference between ebb and flood, not perceptible on 
the shores of the wide and deep Mediterranean,^ which in gene- 
ral is very deep all round, and close to the Italian shores,) is 
shown here by laying dry, and covering the mud banks in this 
shallow lagoon. Venice is built upon the little islets in this little 
sea, covering them so entirely with her buildings, that she may 
be truly described as a city springing from the waters. No natu- 
ral land is to be seen — all is water or wall. It is possible that 
some individuals here may be strangers to the ordinary appear- 
ances of animal and vegetable life in the country, may never 
have seen growing corn, nor heard the lark singing, and know 
not what the country means. 

Whoever regrets the decay of Venice, the extinction of her 
independence as a state, regrets the advance of society from bar- 
barism to civilization. The Republic of Venice was a huge com- 
pound of all the evil principles of a social condition collected 
together under an oligarchy. Despotism, intolerance, mutual dis- 
trust among those wielding the power, disregard of the people, 
cruelty, secrecy, terrorism, all the extreme evils of bad govern- 
ment, were united here. It has passed away, and even the relics 
of its former greatness are rapidly decaying — the palaces, quays, 
bridges. In some future age, the traveller may be inquiring. 
Where stood Venice ? The port of this queen of the seas has 
at present in it two foreign brigs, a government guard-ship, and 
some small craft. The appearance of Venice is probably more 
novel and impressive now, in her decay, than in her best days. 
When her port was crowded with vessels, her canals with lighters 
conveying goods, her quays with merchandise, she may have 
been very like some parts of Amsterdam, or other great commer- 
cial cities penetrated by canals. In her present state she is unique, 
because it is not the movement of a seaport or conmiercial town 
upon her waters, but the ordinary communications of her own 
inhabitants with each other. Shipping and trade are not seen 
in it. The coasting trade of Venice, however, in small craft, is 
not inconsiderable. The very supply of 115,000 people, a strong 
garrison, a naval depot, and a host of public functionaries cm- 
ployed in the civil government of the district, with every article, 
even to the fresh water they use, must employ many market 
boats and small craft. Foreign trade at all times has only been 
forced into this channel ; and its present course, by which con- 
28 



426 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

simiers in this part of Europe receive their supplies through 
Trieste, a port fearer to them and to the producers, with more 
convenience and saving of time for shipping, is undoubtedly more 
natural and advantageous. We see with regret the decay of 
ancient power and magnificence; but where these were founded 
on monopoly and oppression, and when we see the supply of the 
necessaries and comforts of life better, cheaper, and more widely 
diffused through society by the downfall of this grandeur and 
power, we may dry our eyes, and be consoled. The extinction 
of the independence of Venice, and the transfer of her territory 
to Austria, however iniquitous in principle and execution, has 
been of advantage to the inhabitants of the old Venetian states. 
A government strong like the Austrian can afford to be impartial, 
favours no one class in systematic, uncontrolled oppression ; and 
where one ruling class had uncontrolled power, as the nobility 
had in the old Venetian state, raises, in reality, the condition of 
the other classes, by depressing this formerly dominant class, sub- 
jecting all to equal and known law, and giving security and pro- 
tection to every man against petty authority. Abuses from power 
lodged in the hands of incompetent, arrogant, or stupid, but still 
responsible functionaries, are more tolerable and curable than 
those of a powerful irresponsible class of nobility without a king. 
It strikes the traveller that here, among the insulated popula- 
tion of a decaying city, he sees no mendicity, and very little 
extreme poverty ; while Bologna, Ferrara, Padua, and all 4he 
other towns he passes through (Florence alone excepted), are full 
of beggars, or beggarly people, ill clothed, apparently ill fed, and 
idle. What may be the cause of this striking difference in Venice ? 
Mendicity is less common, because it is less of a trade here, the 
classes who have anything to give going generally by water, so 
that there are few street-stations in which a mendicant could place 
hmiself with a certainty of finding passengers who could relieve 
him. But poverty and idleness are less prevalent also, because 
the position of this insulated population creates a check upon their 
increasing beyond the means of subsistence. There can be no mar- 
rying here among the lower class upon the vague hope of finding 
a living somehow. A somehow living is out of all question here, 
even in hope, because land-work, garden-work, horse-work, and 
the millions of ramifications of labour connected with these found 
in other cities, are by nature cut off from Venice. There are no 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 427 



beyond a fixed, well ascertained quantity required by this sea-girt 
population; and whoever cannot enter into tlie band of gondoliers, 
tradesmen, artificers, or other labouring men, and succeed to a 
portion of this labour, can entertain no dehisive liope of finding 
a living in any unknown, unexpected way. He sees clearly that 
he is but a supernumerary hand on board the good ship Venice, 
and must wait until a vacancy falls, and he gets into it, before he 
can get employment and pay to keep a family upon. The eye 
of the most ignorant of the working class can take in the whole 
field of labour in this simple state, with no manufactures, no fo- 
reign trade, and no agriculture, and can see that there is no room 
for him to marry. Venice is a striking example of the economical 
preventive check upon over-population ; and not working from 
any superior prudence or intelligence of the lower class, but from 
the greater simplicity of the social relations in which they live 
enabling the most thoughtless to see and calculate upon his means 
of subsistence. It proves, too, that the check upon over-popula- 
tion is to be found in the intelligence and education of the working 
class, in raising their habits and wants to those gratifications which 
property only can indulge in, and in raising their mental power 
to the understanding, and acting upon, those considerations which 
are the same in the most complicated forms of society as in the 
simple form in Venice, although not so obvious to the common 
man of uneducated mind. 

One evening there was a grand illumination in one of the 
parishes in the centre of Venice in honour of the pastor, who had 
completed the fiftieth year of his service in the parish church. It 
was, like everything in Venice, with a touch of the Eastern style. 
Carpets, or silk cloths of brilliant colours, were hung out from 
every window, and across the streets. Every shop had its 
grandest and most costly goods piled up outside, and in the doors 
and windows. Crystal chandeliers, those used in drawing-rooms, 
with lighted wax candles, were suspended on gayly painted rods 
across, between the houses, so as to hang over the centre of the 
narrow flag-paved alleys of the town ; and in these, the throng of 
well-dressed people of the middle and lower classes was immense. 
There was no pushing, or elbowing, or rudeness, in the dense 
mass, although crowded beyond any fashionable London squeeze. 
A military band of an Hungarian regiment played opposite the 



428 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

parish church. We took a gondola up the grand canal, and landed 
at the Rialto, from whence our gondolier piloted us through dark 
lanes, so narrow that two persons could scarcely pass each other, 
until we reached the centre of the show, where the band was 
playing dressed in their Hungarian costume. The scene was 
splendid. The narrow streets lined, and canopied with gay co- 
loured cloths, and silks, and glittering goods ; the wax lights, the 
glass chandeliers, and the well-dressed crowd, appeared a scene 
from the Arabian Night's Entertainments realized. In all this 
bustle, I did not see, even in the fish market at the Rialto, a single 
instance of intoxication — people were not drinking, although all 
were singing, talking, and enjoying themselves — nor a single in- 
stance even among the boys, of jostling, pushing, running, or 
rudeness, nor a single person whom I could suppose to be a po- 
liceman. The ordinary corporal's guard at a public building near 
the church, was the only authority I saw of any kind. I doubt 
if the Austrian government be unpopular with the common people 
here. 

The Venetian taste seems Eastern. The old buildings, like 
St. Mark's, are not Grecian, not Gothic, but Saracenic, in a style 
copied probably from Constantinople. The taste in dress is also 
peculiar. They prefer strongly contrasted, vivid colours. This 
is also the taste in the Venetian school of painting. The very 
climate and situation of Venice naturally produce great contrasts, 
great masses of brilliant light and deep shade. The most im- 
pressive scenery in Venice is in passing by night, in a gondola, 
through the silent, narrow canals, where you plunge into the sha- 
dows, black as midnight, of buildings rising from the water on 
each side ; and all is pitchy darkness, except a small space of sky 
overhead, or a light glimmering in an upper-story window, and 
you emerge suddenly, by a turn of the canal, into a brilliant flood 
of moonlight glittering and dancing on waters and buildings as 
far as eye can reach. In general, however, I prefer the land paths 
in Venice to the solitary dignity of being paddled about in a 
gondola. I like to rub shoulders with the people — to hear the 
merry laugh in the market-place. 

The style of building in the old houses on the canals, is pecu- 
liar. Small, beautifully carved pillars, with windows between, 
and arches joining them with much open work and ornament, 
run in belts round the buildings ; and the main story has project- 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 429 

ing balconies and covered colonnades hanging over the canals. 
These balconies and stone verandas of this Eastern or Saracenic 
style of architecture, must have been costly, from the fine cutting 
of pillars and fret-work ; and now, many of these ancient man- 
sions or palaces are uninhabited, or tenanted in part by the labour- 
ing people, whose shirts and stockings are hanging out to dry 
over balustrades which once half concealed the silk-robed ladies 
of high degree, who sat listening behind them in the twilight to 
well-known strains of music from the swift passing gondola which 
dared not linger. Sic transit gloria mundi. Our gondolier 
pointed out to us his habitation on the grand canal, and at his 
signal-whistle, his little ones ran out on the balcony of the first- 
floor to see their father go past on the water ; happier, perhaps, 
that he was earning eighteen-pence, than ever were the progeny of 
the Venetian noble who built the palace, in all their magnificence. 
His rent, he told us, was three dollars a month for five rooms and 
a cellar; but it was dear, in consequence of the convenience of 
the situation. In remote canals, a zwanziger, two-thirds of a 
franc, per week, is the ordinary rent for labouring people. Their 
fuel for the year will cost sixty zwanziger. The hire of a gon- 
dola for a day is six zwanziger. There is honour among these 
gondoliers ; for although needy and clamorous for fares, and we 
had no fixed engagement with our man, yet if he was out of the 
way, they would call him to come to his usual customers, and 
took no advantage of his absence. There are in Venice about 
200 gondolas plying for hire. The buildings in Venice are not 
in general so lofty as in Genoa, and other Italian cities. St. 
Mark's is a low structure, so is the palace of the doge, and the 
adjoining old prison connected with it by a covered bridge — 
the bridge of sighs— from the upper story of the one building 
to that of the other. These are all low structures, that is, the 
proportion of the height to the extent of front is not greater 
than in Grecian architecture, and, therefore, they are not to be 
classed with the Gothic. Venice probably borrowed her style 
of building from Constantinople, when she was mistress of the 
East. Some of the old mansions in the secondary canals are 
very interesting, from the peculiar style of architecture and orna- 
ment. 

It is the predominating, characteristic, and distinctive principle 



430 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

of Gothic architecture to seek its effects by extensions in the height; 
and that of Grecian architecture, on the contrary, to seek its effects 
by extensions parallel to the horizon. These two distinct prin- 
ciples will be found to govern all the details, as well as the gene- 
ral masses, of each of these two distinct styles of architecture — 
the arches, gates, windows, fronts, interiors — to run through all 
their parts, and to govern the whole ideal of the structure in every 
pure and complete specimen of either style. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE BRENTA.— ITALIAN TOWNS.— WAY OF LIVING OF THE LOWER 
CLASSES.— DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ITALIAN AND ENGLISH POPU- 
LATIONS.— CAUSES OF THE DIFFERENCE.— REPRODUCTIVE AND UN- 
REPRODUCTIVE EXPENDITURE. 

We set off with regret from Venice — a city fascinating even in 
her decay, and crossed again to Fusina, the nearest custom-house 
on terra firma, at a very early hour. In this delightful climate 
the morning air is not damp, raw, and uncomfortable ; but is 
agreeable to the feelings. The air, even in Venice, is so opposed 
to dampness, that scarcely any slime or green moss grows on the 
walls at the surface of the water, on the stone steps of the doors 
upon the canals, or even upon the wooden piles in the sea. It 
was ebb tide, and these were uncovered lower than usual ; and 
we passed even extensive banks of sand or gravel, laid dry at low 
water — such islands as Venice itself is built on. Venice being 
a free port, in which goods are landed free of custom-house duty, 
the traveller's luggage has to undergo the same kind of search at 
Fusina as if it were landed from a foreign ship. We found the 
officers not more troublesome than in any of our own custom- 
houses. From Fusina to Padua you travel in the course of a 
forenoon along the Brenta, a muddy river inclosed between 
artificial dykes, and the level of its bed raised considerably above 
that of the land on each side. This river, and the Po, run upon 
the country, rather than through it ; for the channel of the waters 
is raised by the deposit of ages, and the embankments on each 
side, high above the land. The delightful villas on the banks of 
the Brenta are like Dutch country houses, adorned with leaden 
statues of nymphs, satyrs, Ncptunes, shepherdesses, rows of tubs 
and jars holding orange trees, and shrubs, a parterre gay with 
ordinary flowers, and hid behind a mud-bank raised on each side 
of the bed of the yellow, thick river, for retaining it in its channel. 
Of delightful villas in this taste, the traveller will find a much more 



432 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

delightful assortment on the banks of the canal from Amsterdam 
to Utrecht. Some poet " celebrates the song of the nightingale 
on the banks of the Brenta ;" but the croaking in the ditch drowns 
the melody of the bush. 

From Padua, the traveller passes through Vicenza, Verona, 
Brescia, Bergamo, on his way to Milan. These are all large 
towns, shrunk, indeed, from their original girth of wall ; but still 
towns of from 30,000 to 60,000 inhabitants, situated at short dis- 
tances from each other, and with no particular manufacture or 
branch of industry established in them. How do these city- 
masses of population live? The country is fertile. Its products 
are among the most valuable of the earth — corn, rice, wine, oil, 
silk, fruits. The rents of the land, whether paid in money or in 
portions of the products of the soil, are spent in the cities, and also 
all the public revenues. If we look at the country, we see what 
supports the towns. The people are in poverty in the country, 
notwithstanding the fertility of the soil. It is impressive to see 
those who raise silk — the most costly material of human clothing 
— going about their work barefoot, and in rags. The inhabitants 
of Lombardy, and the other Austrian possessions in Italy, are far 
from being in so good a condition as the people of Tuscany; but 
are in a much better condition than the people of the Papal and 
Neapolitan States. The houses are good, although scantily fur- 
nished, and displaying no such quantity of plenishing as in the 
dwellings of the Swiss or French peasantry— no stocks of bedding, 
household linen, earthenware, pewter, copper, and iron utensils. 

The homeless out-of-door way of living of the labouring class 
all over Italy, is a cause as well as an effect of poverty. It blunts 
the feeling for domestic comfort, which is a powerful stimulus to 
steady industry. People of the working class here breakfast out ; 
that is, take a cup of coffee, or something equivalent, at a stall, or 
coffee room. It is only in large towns with us, that the workman 
or labourer does not take his meals at home, or from his home ; 
and the traveller is surprised to see trattoria and coffee rooms in 
Italy, not merely in towns, but in lonely country situations where 
there are only a few houses of the labouring people. This is not 
an indication, as it would be considered with us, that the people 
of the neighbourhood are well off, and have something to spend 
in such gratifications as public places of resort for their class afford; 
but it is an indication of their poverty. Those who with us would 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. " 433 

have their own little housekeepings and cooking, have not the 
means, nor perhaps the taste for such domestic comfort, and take 
their victuals at the trattoria, or cook-shop. The number of such 
places of entertainment for the lower class in little villages and 
hamlets which could support no such trade in our country, puzzles 
the traveller at first, because this apparent surplus of expenditure 
is inconsistent with the visible poverty of the inhabitants. But it 
is in reality the economy of poverty, not the expenditure of surplus 
means of gratification, which supports these places. It is a more 
economical way of living in this climate, in which firing is little 
required for comfort, than if each family of the labouring class had 
a housekeeping for itself But the domestic habits and virtues 
suffer under this homeless, thoughtless, careless way of living, and 
the time saved by it is not employed. The women are sauntering 
about all day on the gossip, with their distaff and spindle, the men, 
according to the weather, basking in the sun, or slumbering in the 
shade. 

The effects of climate, soil, fertility, and other natural circum- 
stances of a country, upon the habits, morals, and civilization of 
the people, would be a curious subject of speculation, and one 
which would explain many apparent difficulties in accounting for 
the very different progress of different nations. The difference, 
for example, in the condition and civilization of the Italian and 
British people is very remarkable, and may be traced to natural 
causes of climate, soil, and situation. The climate and soil of 
Italy are incomparably more productive than those of Great Bri- 
tain. The population of the two countries is about equal— the 
island of Great Britain in 1831, having 16,262,301 inhabitants, 
and the peninsula of Italy 15,549,393. Both countries are in- 
habited in much the same way, that is, in a great number of 
very large cities and towns, as well as in hamlets and single rural 
habitations. But the Italian population is unquestionably far 
behind the British in the enjoyments of civilized life, in the useful 
arts, in civil and political liberty, in wealth, intelligence, industry, 
and in their moral condition. To what can this difference be 
ascribed ? Italy was far advanced — as far in many points as she 
is at this day — before England had started in the course of civil- 
ization ; and when Scotland* was in a state of gross barbarism. 

* " Quid loquar," says Saint Jerome in his epistles, " de costcris nationibus, 



434 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

The Englishman ascribes this to the want of constitutional go- 
vernment ; the Scotchman to the want of pure religious doctrine. 
The government and religion of a foreign country are two very- 
convenient pack-horses for the traveller. They trot along the 
road with him, carrying all that he cannot otherwise conveniently 
dispose of, and the prejudices of his readers prevent any doubt of 
the burden being laid upon the right beast. But, in reality, no go- 
vernment of the present day, whatever be its form, is so ignorant 
of sound principle, so blind to its own interests, and so impregnable 
to public opinion, as wilfully to keep back, discourage, or attempt 
to put down industry and civilizatiou. It is in the means they 
use, not in the end they propose, that modern governments, whe- 
ther despotically or hberally constituted, differ from each other; 
and for many objects, even the means of the despotically governed 
states are, in themselves, better — are a more effective machinery 
than those of the constitutional states. The despotic countries 
of Europe — Austria, Prussia, Denmark, for instance, are actually 
in advance of the constitutionally governed — Britain, France, 
Belgium, in the means or machinery for diffusing education 
among the people. Where they err, is in doing too much for 
the promotion of education, manufactures, and commerce, and 
not leaving the plants to their natural growth, and not leaving 
the people to themselves — to their own social management — 
to their own natural tendency to extend the cultivation of them 
in exact proportion to their wants ; but are incessantly apply- 
ing the hand of government to foster the crop to a sickly ma- 
turity. As to religion, the Popish practically interferes less with 
the time and industry of the people than the Presbyterian. One 

quum ipse adolescentulus in Gallia viderim Scotos, gentem Britaiuiicam, 
humanis vesci carnibus, et quum per silvas porcorum greges pecudumque 
reperiant, tamen pastorum nates et foeminarum papillas solere abscindere, et 
has solas ciborum delicias arbitrari." Evidence may sometimes prove too 
much as well as too little for establishing facts. What St. Jerome says he 
himself saw, is either entitled to credit, or not entitled to credit. If not, what 
becomes of the history of the first ages of the church as gathered from such 
authority as this father's? The addition to what he states he himself saw of 
those Scotch cannibals ; viz., that when they found herds of swine and cattle 
in the woods, they preferred a slice of the hips of the keepers, or the breasts 
of the female attendants on the herds, to the beef and pork, proves too much. 
People who keep flocks and herds of cattle and swine, and tend them in the 
woods, are not in the social condition to eat each other for want of food or of 
civilization. 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 436 

half of Sunday only is kept as a time of rest in Popish lands, 
and that not very strictly in agricultural labour ; and in seed- 
time, harvest, vintage, and hay-making, people in Catholic coun- 
tries generally labour in the fields after mass, that is, after twelve 
at noon, nor is it considered indecorous to do so. Holyday, or 
Saints' days, are also practically observed only until the forenoon 
mass is over. Of these, before the French Revolution, there were 
sixteen days in Paris yearly ; but twenty-four days, on an ave- 
rage of all France, observed for half the day, viz., until noon, as 
church holydays. If we reckon the days at Christmas observed 
in England, the Good Friday, Easter Monday, Gunpowder Plot, 
Charles's Martyrdom, King's Birthday, and other idle customary 
festivals, we would probably find little difference. In Scotland, 
if we reckon the occasional fast-days, proclaimed by the church ; 
the preparation-days for the sacrament ; and the many half-days 
devoted to religious meetings, prayer meetings, church meetings, 
missionary society meetings, Bible society meetings, and all the 
other social duties connected with the religious position and senti- 
ments of the individual, it will be found, as it ought to be found, 
that out of the 365 days, the pious well-conducted Presbyterian 
tradesman, workman, or respectable middle-class man in Scot- 
land, bestows, in the present times, many more working hours in 
the year upon religious concerns than the Papist in Italy. It is 
an inconsistency to ascribe to the loss of time by their religious 
observances, the poverty and idleness of the populations of the 
south of Europe, when we see the time abstracted among our- 
selves from the pursuits of industry for religious purposes, al- 
though little, if at all, less in amount, producing no such impov- 
erishing or prejudicial effects; but, on the contrary, evidently 
invigorating the industry of the people, and contributing essen- 
tially to their morality and civilization. 

It is, in truth, neither the bad government, nor the bad religion 
of Italy, which keeps her behind the other countries of Europe. 
The blessings of Italy are her curse. Fine soil and climate, and 
an almost.equal abundance of production overall the land, render 
each man too independent of the industry of his fellow-men. 
Italy has not, like all other countries which have attained to any 
considerable and permanent state of general civilization and in- 
dustry, one portion of her population depending, from natural 
causes, upon another portion for necessary articles — no highland 



436 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

and lowland, no inland and seacoast populations producing 
different necessaries of life, and exchanging with each other 
industry for industry — no wine-growing population, and corn- 
growing population, as in France, depending upon each other's 
production — no mining population, sea-faring population, manu- 
facturing population, distinct from agricultural population and 
production. She has no natural division of her social body into 
growers and consumers, because every inhabitable corner of the 
peninsula grows almost the same kind of products, corn, wine, oil, 
silk, fruits ; and every consumer is a producer : and there is no 
natural capability in the country of raising an artificial division 
in its population by trade or manufacture. The great source of 
industry and civilization in France is the cultivation of the vine, 
and its natural exclusion from all the north of France. It is the 
greatest manufacture in the world. It not only gives within 
France itself a constant interchange of industry for industry, as 
the country north of Paris produces no wine ; but all the north of 
Europe, all America, all the world where Christians dwell, con- 
sume wines of French production. Italy has not this advantage. 
With her equal, or nearly equal productiveness of soil and climate 
over all, both in the kinds and quantities of her products, no con- 
siderable masses of her population are depending on each other's 
industry for the supply of their mutual wants, and inseparably 
bound up with each other by common interests. Italy has no 
natural capabilities of raising up such a division in the masses of 
her population by manufacturing or commercial industry. There 
is little command of water-power, and none of fire-power, in the 
Italian peninsula for moving machinery. The Po, the Adige, the 
Tecino, and all the Alpine rivers ; the Tiber, the Arno, and all 
from the Apennines, owing to the melting of the snow at their 
main sources, partake of the character of mountain-streams, hav- 
ing such difference of level at different seasons, that mill-seats on 
their banks, at which water-power can be always available, are 
extremely rare. The corn mills on those river are constructed on 
ratfs or boats anchored in the stream so as to rise and fall with 
the increase or decrease of the water. Italy also, notwithstanding 
her vast extent of seacoast, is badly situated for commercial in- 
dustry or supporting a sea-faring population. She has little 
coasting trade, because all parts of her territory produce nearly 
the same articles in sufficient abundance for the inhabitants, and 



I 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 437 

has little trade, for the same reason, with the other countries on 
the Mediterranean. Her seacoast, also, is in general uninhabit- 
able from malaria ; so that no great mass of population deriving 
the means of living from commercial industry, and distinct from 
the inland population, can ever be formed. Cities and towns are, 
no doubt, numerous in Italy, and, perhaps, so many masses of 
population of from fifty or sixty thousand persons, down to two 
or three thousand, cannot be found anywhere else in Europe, 
within so small an area as in the plains of this peninsula. But 
these cities and towns are of a very peculiar character. The 
country is so fertile, that each of these masses of population draws 
its subsistence from, and extends its influence over, a very small 
circle beyond its own town walls. All capital, industry, intelli- 
gence, civil authority, and business, public or private ; all trade, 
manufacture, or consumpt of the objects of trade and manufac- 
ture, and, it may be said, all civilization, are centralized within 
these cities, and the small circles of country around them from 
which they draw the articles of their consumpt. Italy is a striking 
example of the practical working, in social economy, of the sys- 
tem of centralization in towns or seats of provincial government, 
of the civil establishments, intelligence, and wealth of a country. 
Each city or town, within its own circle, suffices for itself, is a 
metayer family upon a great scale living upon its own farm, and 
having no dependence upon, or connection with, the industry, 
interests, prosperity, or business of its neighbours in the land ; 
and very little communication or traffic with any other masses of 
population, by carriers, wagons, carts, diligences, or water con- 
veyances, the objects of interchange being, from the general 
bounty of nature, but very (ew between them. They are moral 
oases, beyond which all is desert. Within them people are 
refined, intelligent, wealthy, imbued with a taste for the fine arts, 
and inspired with liberal ideas of the constitutional rights of the 
people, and national independence of their country; and without, 
the people belong to a different country, age, and state of civiliza- 
tion ; are ignorant, rude, poor, half-civilized, clothed in sheepskins, 
or unsecured, brown, woollen cloaks, or are half-clothed, enjoy- 
ing, in supreme indolence in the sunshine or the shade, a rough 
bellyful, without a care or wish for other gratifications or other 
social condition. The town populations and higher classes have 
sailed out of sight of the main body of the people. Our cities 



438 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

and towns are generally the growth of manufacturing or com- 
mercial industry congregating men in gradually increasing masses 
of population which depend upon the country around, and, in 
our less productive soil and climate, upon a much greater circle 
of country around, for their supplies of food ; but not for the 
.- means of buying food. Here, the town population draw the 
means of buying, as well as what they buy, from the country, 
leaving on the land the cattle and the peasantry to reproduce 
next year their own food, and the incomes of the town popula- 
tions. The princes, nobility, or other landholders, where the land 
is not, as in Tuscany, divided among the peasantry, the higher 
clergy, the military and civil establishments of government, local 
and general, with their armies of functionaries, live in the towns 
and cities with the tradesmen who live by supplying them. The 
traffic between town and country is small, because there are no 
consumers in the country ; its produce is consumed in the towns 
without any return. The interchange of industry between town 
and town is still less, for each population is a little state within 
itself, sufficing within its own circle for all its demands, and ham- 
pered, besides, with all sorts of impediments to communication, 
with passports, town duties, custom-house examinations, and for- 
malities at the town gates. Italy is dotted over with these sepa- 
rate and distinct masses of population, forming no whole of 
power, wealth, connected industry, common interests, objects, or 
feelings ; and this state of disunion in the social economy of the 
Itahan people is, I apprehend, the effect of natural, not of political 
causes. Nature having bestowed almost equally over all the 
inhabitable land of Italy all that man requires in a low, but not 
uncomfortable condition, neutralizes by her very bounty the main 
element of social union — the dependence of men upon the inter- 
change with each other of the products of their industry. Man 
is cemented to man by mutual wants. Social union, national 
spirit, interests, and industry exist only in masses of people living 
by each other. Identity of language, religion, laws, government, 
will not, as we see in Germany, amalgamate into one nation 
populations having no want of each other in their ordinary 
modes of existence, no dependence on each other for the neces- 
saries or enjoyments of life. ^This disunion appears to have been 
in all ages the state of the groups of populations on the Italian 
peninsula. The power of the sword in the time of the Romans, 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 439 

the power of commercial capital in the middle ages, the power of 
the sword again in the days of Napoleon, compressed Italy, or 
distinct portions of Italy, into national masses in form and govern- 
ment ; but when the pressure was removed, the parts started 
asunder again ; the cement was wanting which holds men to- 
gether in effective national union, viz., their mutual wants, and 
the exchange of industry against industry to supply mutual 
wants. They are a people living, each family for itself in a 
remarkably unconnected social state, even in the same communi- 
ties, and without need of or confidence in each other ; and, as com- 
munities unimbued with any common feeling or spirit that can be 
called national. This has ever been so. The earliest period of 
Ronian history shows Italy in the same state of social economy 
as at the present hour. The bounty of nature enables man to live 
unconnected with man by ties of common interests and necessities, 
and exchanges of industry. 

Besides this natural cause for the permanently stationary con- 
dition of the inhabitants of Italy, the means of the country, its 
time, labour, and capital, have been deplorably wasted. If the 
influx of riches constitutes national wealth, Italy should be the 
richest country in Europe, instead of one of the poorest. But 
the enormous capital which superstition in the middle ages, and 
down even to modern times, drew to Rome, the vast wealth 
which the commerce of the East brought, in the same ages, to 
Florence, Pisa, Genoa, Venice, have all been laid out unrepro- 
ductively, and have not left a trace behind in the condition, well- 
being, or industry of the people. The vestiges of all these 
riches are to be seen only upon the face of the land in palaces, 
churches, and ornaments ; not in the habits, ideas, or industry of 
the people. It has been reckoned that the churches of Italy, with 
their embellishments, their marbles, jewels, gold and silver orna- 
ments, paintings and statuary, have cost more than the fee-simple 
of the whole land of the Italian peninsula would amount to, if 
sold at the present average price of land per acre. This enor- 
mous outlay of capital has been altogether unreproductive. If we 
look again at the vast and splendid palaces, with their ornamen- 
tal architecture, their magnificent galleries of precious paintings, 
statues, fine marbles, and all the costly glory displayed, oven now 
in their decay, in every second-rate town in Italy, but particularly 
in the capital cities, and those which have been independent com- 
mercial states, such as Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Venice, we can 



440 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

scarcely estimate the cost of the civil edifices of Italy with their 
embellishments, at much less than that of the ecclesiastical. All 
this outlay of capital has been altogether unreproductive. We 
see in these expensive structures a sufficient cause to account for 
the downfall of the commercial prosperity of Genoa, Venice, and 
the other Italian states which once ruled the money-market, the 
trade, and industry of the world. 

It may be necessary to explain more fully what is meant by 
reproductive and unreproductive expenditure in political eco- 
nomy. It appears, at first sight, a distinction without a difference, 
as applied to national wealth. The man who builds a church, or 
a palace, lays out his money in the payment of labour as much 
as the man who builds a spinning. mill or a ship. It is only a 
transfer of capital, in both cases, from those who buy labour to 
those who sell labour ; and the capital, although it may be lost by 
the one individual, is gained by the other, and cannot be said to 
be sunk, or lost to the country, in the one application of it more 
than in the other. This is the view of many political economists: 
but it is not correct. Suppose two merchants build each a ship 
at the cost of 15,000/. The sum is paid to wood merchants, rope 
and sail makers, carpenters, riggers, and others, for labour, or 
material of which the value consists in the labour of producing 
and transporting it. At this step there is no loss of capital ; but 
only an exchange of it between those who buy labour, or its 
products, and those who sell it. The nation or community gains 
by the circulation, as new objects, the two vessels, are produced 
by the labour. But suppose one of these vessels is kept well em- 
ployed for a dozen years. She reproduces her cost, the 15,000/. 
This is capital laid out reproductively. It is laid out again and 
again, and employs and remunerates labour and industry from 
generation to generation. Suppose the other vessel is made an 
habitation of, laid up by the side of a canal, and converted into a 
Venetian palace. Her cost is unreproductive : it is capital sunk 
and lost, as far as regards national wealth, and well-being, and 
employment of labour, having acted only once in the labour 
market, and having then been totally withdrawn from it. This 
has been precisely the case with an incalculable amount of capital, 
not only in Italy, but in the Hanse Towns, in Flanders, in Holland, 
in all the old seats of European commerce and wealth. In 
visiting those ancient cities, which once were in the trade of the 
world what London, Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow, are now, the 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 441 

traveller sees that the besetting error of commercial wealth, in the 
ages and countries which preceded England and her rise, has been 
to over-build and over-display itself in unreproductive objects, in- 
stead of retaining their capitals as working means or capitals in 
trade or manufactures. Wealth acquired in commerce, properly 
so called, that is, in the transport of products, natural or artificial, 
h'om one country to another, seems to have a tendency to expand 
itself unreprodnctively, to overstep its prudent limits and true in- 
terests, not only in private dwellings and gratifications, but even in 
works of undeniable utility, as in cutting and facing harbours and 
canals, building quays, piers, town walls, citadels, town houses, 
churches, and in our days in docks, warehouses, and railroads — all 
very useful works, but not always useful in proportion to their cost, 
not always saving time and labour to an extent that will ever be 
reproductive of the capital invested in their construction. Wealth 
acquired by manufacturing industry seldom falls into this error. 
The value of convenience, time, and labour, is more exactly appre- 
ciated, and is rarely overpaid by those who have daily to estimate 
time, labour, and convenience in the economy of manufacturing 
operations. Of this unreproductive outlay of capital, the traveller 
sees less in Great Britain than in the poorest countries of Europe; 
and to this may be mainly ascribed her vast national wealth, her 
industrial activity, and her boundless working capital at the pre- 
sent day. In proportion to the wealth of the country, how few 
in Great Britain are the buildings of any note, public or private, 
civil, military, or ecclesiastical ! How little is the absorption of 
capital in museums, pictures, gems, curiosities, palaces, theatres, 
or other unreproductive objects ! This, which is the main founda- 
tion of the greatness of the country, is often stated by foreign 
travellers, and by some of our own periodical writers, as a proof 
of our inferiority. Time and money arc not employed in works 
of the fine arts, either by individuals, or by the state, in the 
same proportion as in other countries — in France, Prussia, 
Bavaria, Italy— and are lightly esteemed by our public, when 
so employed. Music, painting, architecture, sculpture, dancing, 
cooking, all the arts, fine or not fine, that address themselves 
only to the senses, or please only through the gratification of 
the senses, have but little hold of the public mind with us. It 
is one of the strongest characteristics of the British people, that 
all the sports and amusements of every rank and ckiss nuist, to be 
29 



442 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

popular, occupy the intellectual powers, the judgment of the 
individual. He will not sit and listen, or look, and be a mere 
passive recipient of pleasurable sensations or impressions. Hunt- 
ing, shooting, horse-racing, boat-sailing, all amusements in which 
judgment is exercised, and individuality is called into play, should 
it be only in betting upon the most absurd objects, have so decided 
a preponderance in the national mind, that it is altogether a hope- 
less attempt to instil into our lower or middle classes anything 
like the passive taste for music or painting that prevails in foreign 
countries. The museum, or concert-room, or opera, would always 
be deserted for the meeting, or club, or circle, whatever be its 
objects, religious, poUtical, or convivial, in which the individual's 
own faculties or powers take a part. I cannot think this any 
proof of a want of intellectuality in a people. Be it so or not, it 
is undeniable that in the character of the people of Britain, even 
of the higher classes, there is no feeling for the fine arts, no foun- 
dation for them, no esteem for them. A single town in Italy or 
Germany could produce more show edifices, more costly palaces, 
museums, picture galleries, and music saloons, than half the island 
of Great Britain. The wealth of some of the smaller European 
states, as for instance of Bavaria, Saxony, Denmark, Sweden, and 
of all the little German principalities, has in modern times been 
almost entirely absorbed in building royal palaces, museums, thea- 
tres, and in lodging the nobility proportionably to their sovereigns. 
Royalty itself is poorly lodged in England in proportion to the 
wealth of the country, and to the palaces of many a little conti- 
nental prince ; and the merchant in London or Liverpool, or the 
manufacturer in Manchester or Glasgow, lives. in a modest, cheap 
dwelling, compared to the vast magnificent palaces of the same 
classes in the middle ages, still to be seen in the old commercial 
cities of Italy and Flanders, and in the old Hanseatic cities all 
over the Continent, and which are literally the tombs of their 
commercial prosperity. In them are buried the means which 
would to this day have commanded the trade of the world, had 
these vast private capitals been still available by having been laid 
out reproductively in the industry market, as the same class of 
capitals has always been in England, instead of being buried in 
marble and mortar. In this English taste there is nothing to 
regret, nor is any want of intellectual employment in such a social 
existence to be justly complained of. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

NOTES ON MILAN.— COMO'.— AUSTRIAN GOVERNMENT.— L AGO MAGGI- 
ORE.— ISOLA BELLA.— THE ALPS.— ON THE SOCIAL STATE OF FRANCE, 
PRUSSIA, ITALY. 

The traveller tires of the plain of Lombardy in an hour. He 
has no extensive view of country in this garden of Europe. 
Every field is beset with rows of pollard-mulberry trees, plucked 
bare of foliage for feeding the silk-worms. The fields are beauti- 
fully irrigated with clear water carried in little ducts along them ; 
and one or two such little fields, rows of pollards surrounding 
them, and the endless straight avenue from city to city, make very 
uninteresting scenery. It is flat, tame, and without the character 
of nationality, which gives an interest to the flat, tame scenery of 
Holland. The gay bustle of Milan, and the view of its duomo 
with the forest of white marble pinnacles on the roof— the most 
beautiful roof-scenery in the world — will scarcely repay the 
traveller for the dull duty of approaching them through an end- 
less tedious avenue of stif[ trees, presenting, mile after mile, the 
same and the same. 

Como is a pretty considerable town at the foot of the pic- 
turesque lake of the same name, a town of 12,000 or 15,000 in- 
habitants. The population of the neighbouring country consists 
almost entirely of the class of travelling pedlers who go out into 
the world to sell stucco figures, barometers, bird-cages, and such 
small wares. They are often absent ten or twelve years from 
their families, and return with their little savings to buy a cottage, 
and bit of land, at ten times what we would consider the value, 
on the side of their native lake. About 3000 of these travelling 
dealers from this district are reckoned to be in or about London ; 
and they often attain what in this country at least is very con- 
siderable wealth. They are a very interesting class. As pedlers 
they have experience of the condition of the lower classes, and 
even of the middle class, in many different countries, and are often 



444 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

shrewd, observing men, well worth getting acquainted with. The 
traveller gathers from their conversation the practical difference 
between the well-intentioned, paternal government of the mildest 
of autocratic states — Austria — and a government in which public 
opinion has its due influence through a constitutional means of 
e;?ipressing it. It cannot be doubted that it is with the best inten- 
tions, and from a supreme care for what is considered the public 
good, that the^ Austrian government holds the people in a state 
of moral vassalage, treats them as beings in a state of pupilage, 
not as free agents, and governs all things by the will and wisdom 
of a ruling few. The ruling few, however, cannot be wise in all 
things, are often duped by those below them in executive or ad- 
ministrative function, on whom they must depend for sound in- 
formation, and are duped, too, by their own social position, by 
the esprit of functionarism., the esprit des bureaux, which is so 
apt to mistake the perfection of the means for the perfection of 
the end in public affairs. They have no wish to legislate wrong; 
but they legislate on guess, not upon knowledge. The ruling 
class are too far removed from the ordinary business and interest 
of the multitude working below them, to understand personally 
the business of that multitude ; and are bred in a circle of ideas 
widely different from that of the classes for whom they legislate. 
They necessarily depend for their ideas and opinions upon the 
army of civil functionaries with whom alone they can communi- 
cate. These must appear to have something to do for their bread, 
and their bread perhaps depends in part on fees, fines, and dou- 
ceurs. Hence the miserable policy of the Austrian, and all the 
other despotic states, of interfering in, managing, and watching 
over all private industry or enterprise, and all trade or individual 
action. The shop, the dwelling, the bed even of the trader, here 
in Austrian Italy, are exposed to vexatious examinations at the 
will of the local douanier — a half military German animal. The 
market cart going into a town with hay is probed with an iron 
rod at the town gate, in case it should be conveying goods subject 
to duty. The gig, or country vehicle with market people, is 
stopped and searched. The simple undertaking of running a 
diligence daily from Milan to Como, and back, a distance of twenty 
miles, was considered too important a concern to be left to indi- 
vidual enterprise, and was taken possession of as a branch of 
public business which it belonged to government functionaries 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 445 

only to carry on. It is with extreme difficulty the petty trader can 
get passports from the Austrian authorities, to travel on his need- 
ful affairs. Securities must be given, and the causes of his going 
explained, even when his military or other public duties are ac- 
complished, or fully provided for, and his station in life too low 
to make him an object of political suspicion. One of the travelling 
pedlers of this country, who had been for many years in America 
and was returning from a visit to his friends at Como, travelled 
with me by the voiturin to Switzerland. He made the emphatic 
observation, when we had got beyond the Austrian frontier, in 
speaking of the trammels on all industry and individual freedom, 
" That it was better to be dead in America than alive in Italy." 
The lake of Como, skirted all round by steep hills, with scarcely 
room for a carriage road and a villa-parterre between the hill and 
the water, has not the variety of scenery, nor perhaps the gran- 
deur, of the Swiss lakes. The scenery of the Lago Maggiore is 
more open and diversified. Pebbly beaches here and there be- 
tween the rocky headlands relieve the monotony of rock and 
water. The shores of this lake are watched and patroled day 
and night by the sentinels and guards of the douane, as vigilantly 
as if an invading enemy were in force on the other shore. At 
Arona, a huge enormity in copper, the colossal statue of Saint 
Charles of Borromeo, is the wonder— not, I presume, the admira- 
tion — of all travellers. It is said to be SO feet high, and the head, 
in size, and merit as a work of art, is about equal to the wooden 
house of a small windmill. In the same taste, and a monument 
of the same senseless expenditure of the same family, is the Bor- 
romean Isle in the Lago Maggiore — the Isola Bella. It is as bella 
as a little rocky islet in a lake can be, covered entirely with par- 
terres, and flower pots, and grotto work, shell work, moss work, 
statuary work, and such gewgaws, with a French chateau to cor- 
respond. The isle so decked out, amidst scenery of a totally 
different character, looks like an old court lady arrayed in silks, 
lace, and diamonds, a hooped petticoat, and white satin shoes, left 
by some mischance, scpialting down all alone upon a rock in the 
midst of a Highland loch. The thing is neither pretty nor in 
place ; but it has its value, too, in contrast. It is but a day's 
journey from this wretched monument of bad taste to some of the 
grandest scenes in Europe. The traveller, however, in crossing 
the Simplon, misses almost all the sublime impressions he expects. 



446 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

The highest elevation of the road across it, from Domo d'Ossolo 
on the Italian side to Brigg in the Valois, is about 4500 feet ; and 
although at this elevation there are avalanches, snows, glaciers, 
winding roads, with cataracts and precipices below, and clouds 
and blue sky above, and all the other romance furniture of Alpine 
scenery, yet, if truth may be told, the hills of two or three thou- 
sand feet of elevation in our northern latitude and climate are far 
more imposing on the human mind, far more sublime. The 
positive elevation to which you have been climbing up perhaps 
from the pier of Boulogne, or the quay of Naples, or the Lido of 
Venice, enters not into the mind through the senses, but only on 
consideration, and as a cold mathematical truth. What strikes 
the mind on great mountain elevations is the sublime, almost 
terrific silence, suspension, death of nature, the lonely sterility, the 
absence of all animal or vegetable life, the reduction of all created 
objects to rock and cloud. This is felt in our northern latitude on 
hills of 2000 feet, more impressively than in this climate at 4000 
feet of elevation. The tree grows, the bird sings at the very edge 
of the perpetual snow here, more vigorously than on many a 
northern sea-side plain. 



In passing through France, Prussia, Italy, the traveller returns 
daily to the question, How do the political institutions, the laws, 
mode of government, and national education of those countries 
act upon the social condition of the people? To ascertain, or at 
least to approximate to a just estimate of these influences in difler- 
ent parts of Europe, is the object of the preceding Notes. Will 
the reader concur in the following inferences from them ? 

The object of the governments of these countries must be the 
same as that of our own government — the advantage and well- 
being of the governed. The difference must be in the means 
used, not in the end proposed. 

But good legislation, which is the means used both by the des- 
potic and liberal government for advancing the well-being of the 
people, is not confined to or a necessary consequence of legislative 
power being vested in the representatives of the people. We 
have in Britain, both in our civil and criminal code, laws more 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 447 

absurd, unjust, and prejudicial to the interests and well-being of 
the governed, than the modern laws of any country in Europe : 
for instance, our game laws, our excise laws, our poor laws, our 
corn laws, and other laws and classes of laws of even recent en- 
actment, or recently revived. In the autocratic states, Prussia 
and Austria, in which the legislative power is solely in the execu- 
tive, there are few subjects of legislation in which the executive 
has any interest at variance with or different from that of the 
people, or any favourable feeling towards impolitic, oppressive, 
or unequal laws. On all that concerns private property, on all 
questions between man and man, on all acts injurious to the pub- 
lic, on all civil, criminal, and police affairs, it is the interest of the 
despotic as much as of the free state to legislate aright. It is also, 
theoretically considered, more in the power of the despotic state 
to do so — unpleasant as this truth may sound in ears radical— than 
of the liberally constituted or free state ; because the persons ap- 
pointed by the executive to consult together, consider, frame, and 
draw out the law, are theoretically men bred to legislative science, 
who endeavour to become acquainted with the wants and busi- 
ness of the country, have no personal interests in faulty legislation, 
and although liable to be misinformed by the functionaries around 
them, are unimpeded by ignorant, incompetent fellow-legislators 
as in a popularly elected parliament or legislative assembly. 
There is, theoretically, no reason, in shorty in the nature of des- 
potism or autocratic government itself, as existing in modern en- 
lightened times, why it should not legislate as beneficially for the 
social condition of a people as a freely chosen representative 
legislature ; and there can be no doubt that the Austrian and 
Prussian autocrats, in the beneficent paternal government which 
they affect, do sincerely endeavour to exercise their legislative 
power, before God and man, for the well-being of their people. 

The administration of law, also, as well as the enactment, may 
be, and practically is, more effective and perfect, both in the civil 
and criminal courts, in the despotic than in the free states. The 
nature of despotic government admits of, and produces a chain 
of precise, almost military arrangements for inspection, reference, 
check, and responsibility, running through the whole exercise 
of judicial function, from the lowest court to the highest. These 
autocratically ruled countries are generally divided into small 
circles, each with its court, its judge, its public prosecutor, its 



448 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

licensed procurators or advocates; and their proceedings are 
regularly reported to and watched over by higher judicial colleges 
who have superintendence over a group of these lower primary 
courts, and in some countries, as in Denmark, take cognizance 
of every case and decision of the inferior court, whether appealed 
from by the parties or not, revise their whole protocols, and 
even check undue delay in giving judgment, or undue charges 
of the procurators, and are themselves subject to similar regular 
inspection and surveillance in the discharge of these duties by still 
higher judicial colleges in the state. In the despotic states of 
modern Europe, the judicial power is thus more immediately, and 
for the people more readily and cheaply applied, and by a machin- 
ery more perfect, more divested of personal causes of error in 
judgment from political party feehngs, prejudices, or interests, 
and more carefully watched over and checked, than in our own 
social economy in Britian. England and Scotland are, perhaps, 
the only two countries in Europe which have not, in the course 
of the present half-century, reconstructed their old imperfect or 
feudal arrangements for the administration of law to the people,and 
have not remodeled their law courts to suit the business of the age. 

In what, then, in modern times, if it be neither in the enact- 
ment nor in the administration of law, in what consists the differ- 
ence between free and despotic, liberal and anti-liberal govern- 
ment, as far as regards practically the social condition, and the 
moral and physical well-being of a people ? The difference lies 
in this : 

Man, in his social state, is not intended by his Creator to be 
only a passive subject of wise and good government, be it ever 
so wise and good, but to attain the higher moral condition of 
wisely and well governing himself, not only in his private moral 
capacity as an individual, but in his social political capacity as 
one of the members of a community. Morality and religion 
direct him in his private capacity ; but if he is debarred by the 
arbitrary institutions of his government from exercising the other 
half of his social duties, he is, morally considered, but half a man, 
is answering but half the end for which man is sent into this 
world as a social being ; is fulfilling but half the duties given 
him to be fulfilled by his Creator ; for man is created a political 
as well as a moral being — has a political as well as a moral ex- 
istence. A people governed by laws, in the enactment of which 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 449 

they have no voice, and by functionaries independent of public 
opinion, are in a low social and political, and consequently in a 
low moral condition, however suitable and excellent the law itself 
and its administration may be. They are morally slaves. The 
Prussian, the Austrian, the Neapolitan, the Papal subjects stand 
equally upon this low moral level. The Prussian, the Austrian, 
and Tuscan do, no doubt, enjoy the advantage of many good 
laws, and good institutions, but they do not enjoy the advantage 
of having made them — a moral advantage as great as the material 
advantage of having the benefit of them. If the public mind is 
not exercised and nourished in the considering, enacting, and 
executing for itself the good legislation the public enjoys, public 
spirit, patriotism, and, in private life, as individuals, the spirit of 
free agency in moral conduct, and the sense of moral responsi- 
bility are quenched under the all-doing, paternal management of 
the autocrat for his people, as much as under a harder despot- 
ism. His mildness and beneficence reach only their physical, 
not their moral good. They are in a state of mental vassalage 
as moral and social beings, in a state of pupilage, not of free 
agency, whatever be their education, or their physical condition 
as to food and the comforts of life. The enjoyments and charac- 
ter of an animal-people are all that men attain to under these 
paternal autocratic governments, with perhaps the development, 
in the town populations, of taste and feeling for the fine arts, 
and a certain polish and amenity of manners. These are not to 
be under-valued, but are very agreeable accomplishments to live 
with, and are closely connected with many social virtues. But 
however delightful to live with, and however important in reality 
to the comfort and happiness of social Ufe, and to the formation 
of civilized habits and character among a people, these are not 
the highest acquirements for man in a social state to attain. We 
attach too great importance to these superficial, although intellec- 
tual and moral acquirements, in estimating the education of an 
individual, or of a nation. National education, as it is called, 
turns, in all these paternal autocratic governments which will 
not leave the people to the education of their own free agency 
as moral beings united in society, principally upon the develop- 
ment of these tastes, manners, and feelings. If eating, drinking, 
lodging, and living well, for very little outlay of industry, exer- 
tion, or bodily labour, and still less of mental, and along with 



450 NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 

these the enjoyment, tHrough the eye and ear, of all the pleasures 
'that a cultivated, educated taste in the fine arts affords, — if phy- 
sical good with this kind of intellectual culture or development 
be the great end to be attained by man in society, these autocra- 
tic governments are i:-apidly carrying their people to a higher social 
condition than that of the people of Britain. 

But if the moral and social duties of man, as a member of the 
human family, demand something more than his own animal 
enjoyment, physical well-being, and personal gratification even 
in the intellectual exercise of his taste and feeling — if his true 
position in life be that in which his moral and intellectual nature 
can be fully and freely developed in the exercise of his capabili- 
ties, duties, and rights, as a thinking, responsible free agent — and 
his true education, that which fits him for this position,— then are 
these autocratic governments and their subjects in a low social 
position — one far beneath that of the British, — and their systems 
of national education are not adapted to the great moral end of' 
human existence, but merely to support their governments. If 
we fairly consider the social condition of the continental man of 
whatever class, whatever position, or whatever country, Neapo- 
litan, or Austrian, or Prussian, we find him, body and soul, a slave. 
His going out and coming in, his personal bodily and mental 
action in the use of his property, in the exercise of his industry 
and talents, in his education, his religion, his laws, his doings, 
thinkings, readings, talkings, in public or private afiairs, are fitted 
on to him by his master, the state", like clothing on a convict, and 
in these alone can he move, or execute any act of social existence. 
He has no individual existence socially or morally, for he has no 
individual free agency. His education fits , him for this state of 
pupilage, but not for independent action as a reflecting, self-guid- 
ing being, sensible of and daily exercising his social, political, 
moral, and rehgious rights and duties, as a free agent. In his 
position relatively to these rights and duties, the continental man 
stands on, a level very far below that of the individual of our 
country in a corresponding class of society. With all the igno- 
rance and vice imputed to our lower classes, they are, in true and 
efficient education, as members of society acting for themselves in 
their rights and duties, and under guidance of their own judgment, 
moral sense, and conscience, in a far higher intellectual, moral;, 



J^N 1 9 m9 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER. 451 

and religious condition, than the educated slaves of the Continent. 
This is the conclusion, in social economy, which the author of the 
preceding Notes has come to, and which the reader is requested 
to consider. 



THE END. 




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